Eventually consistent entity resolution

ABSTRACT

A system, method, and computer-readable medium are disclosed for performing an eventually consistent event resolution operation. The eventually consistent event resolution operation includes: parsing entity identifier information, the parsing generating a plurality of entity identifier elements from the entity identifier information; normalizing an entity identifier element of the plurality of entity identifier elements to provide a normalized entity identifier element; associating the normalized entity identifier element with the entity to resolve the identity of the entity; and, performing an eventually consistent event resolution operation, the eventually consistent event resolution operation updating distributed data associated with the entity, distributed data corresponding to entity identifiers impacted by subsequent changes to entity mappings being updated by the eventually consistent event resolution operation to reflect a more recent entity mapping.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Field of the Invention

The present invention relates in general to the field of computers and similar technologies, and in particular to software utilized in this field. Still more particularly, it relates to a method, system and computer-usable medium for achieving eventual consistency when resolving the identity of an entity.

Description of the Related Art

Users interact with physical, system, data, and services resources of all kinds, as well as each other, on a daily basis. Each of these interactions, whether accidental or intended, poses some degree of security risk. However, not all behavior poses the same risk. Furthermore, determining the extent of risk corresponding to individual events can be difficult. In particular, ensuring that an entity is who they claim to be can be challenging.

As an example, a first user may attempt to pose as a second user to gain access to certain confidential information. In this example, the first user may be prevented from accessing the confidential information if it can be determined that they are illegitimately posing as the second user. More particularly, access to the confidential information may be prevented if the identity of the first user is resolved prior to the confidential information actually being accessed. Likewise, the first user's access to the confidential information may be prevented if their identity cannot be resolved to the identity of the second user.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

A system, method, and computer-readable medium for achieving eventual consistency when resolving the identity of an entity.

In one embodiment the invention relates to a method for resolving an identity of an entity, comprising: parsing entity identifier information, the parsing generating a plurality of entity identifier elements from the entity identifier information; normalizing an entity identifier element of the plurality of entity identifier elements to provide a normalized entity identifier element; associating the normalized entity identifier element with the entity to resolve the identity of the entity; and, performing an eventually consistent event resolution operation, the eventually consistent event resolution operation updating distributed data associated with the entity, distributed data corresponding to entity identifiers impacted by subsequent changes to entity mappings being updated by the eventually consistent event resolution operation to reflect a more recent entity mapping.

In another embodiment the invention relates to a system comprising: a processor; a data bus coupled to the processor; and a non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium embodying computer program code, the non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium being coupled to the data bus, the computer program code interacting with a plurality of computer operations and comprising instructions executable by the processor and configured for: parsing entity identifier information, the parsing generating a plurality of entity identifier elements from the entity identifier information; normalizing an entity identifier element of the plurality of entity identifier elements to provide a normalized entity identifier element; associating the normalized entity identifier element with the entity to resolve the identity of the entity; and, performing an eventually consistent event resolution operation, the eventually consistent event resolution operation updating distributed data associated with the entity, distributed data corresponding to entity identifiers impacted by subsequent changes to entity mappings being updated by the eventually consistent event resolution operation to reflect a more recent entity mapping.

In another embodiment the invention relates to a computer-readable storage medium embodying computer program code, the computer program code comprising computer executable instructions configured for: parsing entity identifier information, the parsing generating a plurality of entity identifier elements from the entity identifier information; normalizing an entity identifier element of the plurality of entity identifier elements to provide a normalized entity identifier element; associating the normalized entity identifier element with the entity to resolve the identity of the entity; and, performing an eventually consistent event resolution operation, the eventually consistent event resolution operation updating distributed data associated with the entity, distributed data corresponding to entity identifiers impacted by subsequent changes to entity mappings being updated by the eventually consistent event resolution operation to reflect a more recent entity mapping.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present invention may be better understood, and its numerous objects, features and advantages made apparent to those skilled in the art by referencing the accompanying drawings. The use of the same reference number throughout the several figures designates a like or similar element.

FIG. 1 depicts an exemplary client computer in which the present invention may be implemented;

FIG. 2 is a simplified block diagram of an edge device;

FIG. 3 is a simplified block diagram of an endpoint agent;

FIG. 4 is a simplified block diagram of a security analytics system;

FIG. 5 is a simplified block diagram of the operation of a security analytics system;

FIG. 6 shows a simplified block diagram of an entity behavior profile (EBP);

FIGS. 7a and 7b are a simplified block diagram of the operation of a security analytics system;

FIG. 8 is a simplified process flow diagram showing the performance of event type association operations;

FIG. 9 is a generalized process flow diagram showing the performance of event preprocessing operations;

FIG. 10 is a generalized process flow diagram showing the performance of type-dependent event deduplication operations;

FIG. 11 shows a simplified block diagram of the performance of eventually consistent entity resolution operations;

FIG. 12 shows a simplified block diagram of the performance of entity identifier update operations;

FIG. 13 is a simplified block diagram of an entity resolution system;

FIG. 14 is a simplified block diagram of a security analytics system implemented to provide resolution of an entity's identity;

FIG. 15 is a simplified block diagram of the performance of entity identifier classification operations;

FIG. 16 is a simplified block diagram of the performance of entity identifier normalization operations;

FIG. 17 is a generalized flowchart of the performance of entity identifier element type classification and normalization operations;

FIGS. 18a and 18b are a generalized flowchart of the performance of operations for resolution of an entity's identity.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

A method, system and computer-usable medium are disclosed for achieving eventual consistency when resolving the identity of an entity.

Certain aspects of the invention reflect an appreciation that the occurrence of an event may be associated with anomalous, abnormal, unexpected or malicious user behavior enacted by an entity, as described in greater detail herein. Likewise, certain aspects of the invention reflect an appreciation that such user behavior may be associated with one or more processes, each of which may include a series of process steps. Certain aspects of the invention likewise reflect an appreciation that being able to resolve the identity of an entity prior to the next step of such a process being performed may assist in mitigating risk corresponding to certain user behavior associated with a particular event. Furthermore, certain aspects of the invention likewise reflect an appreciation that known approaches to resolving the identity of multiple entities at a latter point in time, such as batch mode processing, are typically unable to resolve the identity of an entity prior to the performance of the next step of such processes.

Likewise, certain aspects of the invention reflect an appreciation that the ability to identify duplicate copies of data associated with an event, and remove them from ingestion and processing pipelines, may assist in avoiding processing the same event multiple times. Various aspects of the invention reflect an appreciation that it is common to configure an event deduplication process to examine certain subsets of fields that may define equivalence between a pair of events, such as timestamps, message body or associated data, subject of context, entities involved, and so forth. However, various aspects of the invention also reflect an appreciation that such “one size fits all” approaches may inadvertently lead to false positive and false negative deduplication of certain events and their associated data.

Certain aspects of the invention reflect an appreciation that other approaches to event deduplication include implementing a dedicated processing pipeline for each event type. Typically, such approaches achieve their desired goals by configuring each pipeline with its own unique deduplication logic. Certain aspects of the invention reflect that while such approaches may work well when there are just a few types of events, their utility, accuracy, and efficiency may be diminished or otherwise adversely affected when the number of different event types expands. In particular, certain aspects of the invention reflect an appreciation that the separate processing pipelines typically employed in such approaches may not necessarily be required when analyzing dozens of different data sources.

Likewise, certain aspects of the invention reflect an appreciation that certain event processing and analysis systems simply ignore the issue of event deduplication altogether and place the onus of deduplication on upstream data sources or providers. However, certain aspects of the invention reflect an appreciation that such a reliance results in the system processing every event it receives, regardless of whether it, and its associated data, are duplicates. Various aspects of the invention reflect an appreciation that such approaches may not pose an issue for some event processing and analysis systems. However, they may become problematic if the upstream data source is unable to guarantee that each event they provide is unique and provided only once. Accordingly, various aspects of the invention reflect an appreciation that it is likely desirable and advantageous for certain high-throughput event processing systems to employ an “exactly once” semantic approach to event deduplication.

Certain aspects of the invention likewise reflect an appreciation that storing documents in a non-relational database, (e.g., open-core Elasticsearch), often precludes the user from using traditional relational database management system (RDBMS) features, such as joining information across multiple tables. Certain aspects of the invention likewise reflect an appreciation that a common approach to address this limitation is to de-normalize additional information onto documents stored in the database. Skilled practitioners of the art will be familiar with denormalization, which is a database optimization technique where redundant data is added to one or more tables. Those of skill in the art will likewise be aware that such denormalization approaches typically avoid costly joins in a relational database.

However, a common problem with denormalization is that denormalized information may eventually become stale, such as when an email address once associated with one person is associated with another at a later time. Accordingly, certain aspects of the invention reflect an appreciation that stale or invalid de-normalized data may lead to inaccurate query results and inaccurate aggregate summary data. Furthermore, certain aspects of the invention reflect an appreciation that computationally-expensive joins typically require indexing some view of the joined information. Moreover, certain aspects of the invention reflect an appreciation that table joins, as typically used in an RDBMS, are not an option with document stores, such as NoSQL databases, key-value stores, and so forth. Other known approaches for managing this type of cross-database referential information include creating a temp table, forming materialized views, and implementing generated columns, all of which are common techniques. However, none of these approaches are currently used for the purpose of resolving the identity of an entity associated with a security event, described in greater detail herein.

For the purposes of this disclosure, an information handling system may include any instrumentality or aggregate of instrumentalities operable to compute, classify, process, transmit, receive, retrieve, originate, switch, store, display, manifest, detect, record, reproduce, handle, or utilize any form of information, intelligence, or data for business, scientific, control, entertainment, or other purposes. For example, an information handling system may be a personal computer, a mobile device such as a tablet or smartphone, a consumer electronic device, a connected “smart device,” a network appliance, a network storage device, a network gateway device, a server or collection of servers or any other suitable device and may vary in size, shape, performance, functionality, and price. The information handling system may include volatile and/or non-volatile memory, and one or more processing resources such as a central processing unit (CPU) or hardware or software control logic. Additional components of the information handling system may include one or more storage systems, one or more wired or wireless interfaces for communicating with other networked devices, external devices, and various input and output (I/O) devices, such as a keyboard, a mouse, a microphone, speakers, a track pad, a touchscreen and a display device (including a touch sensitive display device). The information handling system may also include one or more buses operable to transmit communication between the various hardware components.

For the purposes of this disclosure, computer-readable media may include any instrumentality or aggregation of instrumentalities that may retain data and/or instructions for a period of time. Computer-readable media may include, without limitation, storage media such as a direct access storage device (e.g., a hard disk drive or solid state drive), a sequential access storage device (e.g., a tape disk drive), optical storage device, random access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), and/or flash memory; as well as communications media such as wires, optical fibers, microwaves, radio waves, and other electromagnetic and/or optical carriers; and/or any combination of the foregoing.

FIG. 1 is a generalized illustration of an information handling system 100 that can be used to implement the system and method of the present invention. The information handling system 100 includes a processor (e.g., central processor unit or “CPU”) 102, input/output (I/O) devices 104, such as a display, a keyboard, a mouse, and associated controllers, a storage system 106, and various other subsystems 108. In various embodiments, the information handling system 100 also includes network port 110 operable to connect to a network 140, which is likewise accessible by a service provider server 142. The information handling system 100 likewise includes system memory 112, which is interconnected to the foregoing via one or more buses 114. System memory 112 further includes operating system (OS) 116 and in various embodiments may also include a security analytics system 118. In one embodiment, the information handling system 100 is able to download the security analytics system 118 from the service provider server 142. In another embodiment, the security analytics system 118 is provided as a service from the service provider server 142.

In various embodiments, the security analytics system 118 performs a security analytics operation. In certain embodiments, the security analytics operation improves processor efficiency, and thus the efficiency of the information handling system 100, by facilitating security analytics functions. As will be appreciated, once the information handling system 100 is configured to perform the security analytics operation, the information handling system 100 becomes a specialized computing device specifically configured to perform the security analytics operation and is not a general purpose computing device. Moreover, the implementation of the security analytics system 118 on the information handling system 100 improves the functionality of the information handling system 100 and provides a useful and concrete result of performing security analytics functions to mitigate security risk.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to include an entity behavior catalog (EBC) system 120, an event preprocessing system 122, and an entity resolution system 124, or a combination thereof. In certain embodiments, the EBC system 120 may be implemented to catalog entity behavior, as described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the event preprocessing system 122 may be implemented to perform type-dependent deduplication operations, as likewise described in greater detail herein. Likewise, in various embodiments, the entity resolution system 124, as described in greater detail herein, may be implemented to perform certain eventually consistent entity resolution operations.

FIG. 2 is a simplified block diagram of an edge device implemented in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. As used herein, an edge device, such as the edge device 202 shown in FIG. 2, broadly refers to a device providing an entry point into a network 140. Examples of such edge devices 202 may include routers, routing switches, integrated access devices (IADs), multiplexers, wide-area network (WAN) access devices, and network security appliances. In certain embodiments, the network 140 may be a private network (e.g., an enterprise network), a semi-public network (e.g., a service provider core network), or a public network (e.g., the Internet).

Skilled practitioners of the art will be aware that edge devices 202 are often implemented as routers that provide authenticated access to faster, more efficient backbone and core networks. Furthermore, current industry trends include making edge devices 202 more intelligent, which allows core devices to operate at higher speed as they are not burdened with additional administrative overhead. Accordingly, such edge devices 202 often include Quality of Service (QoS) and multi-service functions to manage different types of traffic. Consequently, it is common to design core networks with switches that use routing protocols such as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) or Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) for reliability and scalability. Such approaches allow edge devices 202 to have redundant links to the core network, which not only provides improved reliability, but enables enhanced, flexible, and scalable security capabilities as well.

In certain embodiments, the edge device 202 may be implemented to include a communications/services architecture 204, various pluggable capabilities 212, a traffic router 210, and a pluggable hosting framework 208. In certain embodiments, the communications/services architecture 202 may be implemented to provide access to and from various networks 140, cloud services 206, or a combination thereof. In certain embodiments, the cloud services 206 may be provided by a cloud infrastructure familiar to those of skill in the art. In certain embodiments, the edge device 202 may be implemented to provide support for a variety of generic services, such as directory integration, logging interfaces, update services, and bidirectional risk/context flows associated with various analytics. In certain embodiments, the edge device 202 may be implemented to provide temporal information, described in greater detail herein, associated with the provision of such services.

In certain embodiments, the edge device 202 may be implemented as a generic device configured to host various network communications, data processing, and security management capabilities. In certain embodiments, the pluggable hosting framework 208 may be implemented to host such capabilities in the form of pluggable capabilities 212. In certain embodiments, the pluggable capabilities 212 may include capability ‘1’ 214 (e.g., basic firewall), capability ‘2’ 216 (e.g., general web protection), capability ‘3’ 218 (e.g., data sanitization), and so forth through capability ‘n’ 220, which may include capabilities needed for a particular operation, process, or requirement on an as-needed basis. In certain embodiments, such capabilities may include the performance of operations associated with providing real-time resolution of the identity of an entity at a particular point in time. In certain embodiments, such operations may include the provision of associated temporal information (e.g., time stamps).

In certain embodiments, the pluggable capabilities 212 may be sourced from various cloud services 206. In certain embodiments, the pluggable hosting framework 208 may be implemented to provide certain computing and communication infrastructure components, and foundation capabilities, required by one or more of the pluggable capabilities 212. In certain embodiments, the pluggable hosting framework 208 may be implemented to allow the pluggable capabilities 212 to be dynamically invoked. Skilled practitioners of the art will recognize that many such embodiments are possible. Accordingly, the foregoing is not intended to limit the spirit, scope or intent of the invention.

FIG. 3 is a simplified block diagram of an endpoint agent implemented in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. As used herein, an endpoint agent 306 broadly refers to a software agent used in combination with an endpoint device 304 to establish a protected endpoint 302. Skilled practitioners of the art will be familiar with software agents, which are computer programs that perform actions on behalf of a user or another program. In various approaches, a software agent may be autonomous or work together with another agent or a user. In certain of these approaches the software agent is implemented to autonomously decide if a particular action is appropriate for a given event, such as an observed entity behavior, described in greater detail herein.

An endpoint device 304, as likewise used herein, refers to an information processing system such as a personal computer, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a smart phone, a mobile telephone, a digital camera, a video camera, or other device that is capable of storing, processing and communicating data. In certain embodiments, the communication of the data may take place in real-time or near-real-time. As used herein, real-time broadly refers to processing and providing information within a time interval brief enough to not be discernable by a user. As an example, a cellular phone conversation may be used to communicate information in real-time, while an instant message (IM) exchange may be used to communicate information in near real-time. In certain embodiments, the communication of the information may take place asynchronously. For example, an email message may be stored on an endpoint device 304 when it is offline. In this example, the information may be communicated to its intended recipient once the endpoint device 304 gains access to a network 140.

A protected endpoint 302, as likewise used herein, broadly refers to a policy-based approach to network security that typically requires endpoint devices 304 to comply with particular criteria before they are granted access to network resources. As an example, a given endpoint device 304 may be required to have a particular operating system (OS), or version thereof, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) client, anti-virus software with current updates, and so forth. In certain embodiments, the protected endpoint 302 may be implemented to perform operations associated with providing real-time resolution of the identity of an entity at a particular point in time, as described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the protected endpoint 302 may be implemented to provide temporal information, such as timestamp information, associated with such operations.

In certain embodiments, the real-time resolution of the identity of an entity at a particular point in time may be based upon contextual information associated with a given entity behavior. As used herein, contextual information broadly refers to any information, directly or indirectly, individually or in combination, related to a particular entity behavior. In certain embodiments, entity behavior may include an entity's physical behavior, cyber behavior, or a combination thereof. As likewise used herein, physical behavior broadly refers to any entity behavior occurring within a physical realm. More particularly, physical behavior may include any action enacted by an entity that can be objectively observed, or indirectly inferred, within a physical realm.

As an example, a user may attempt to use an electronic access card to enter a secured building at a certain time. In this example, the use of the access card to enter the building is the action and the reading of the access card makes the user's physical behavior electronically-observable. As another example, a first user may physically transfer a document to a second user, which is captured by a video surveillance system. In this example, the physical transferal of the document from the first user to the second user is the action. Likewise, the video record of the transferal makes the first and second user's physical behavior electronically-observable. As used herein, electronically-observable user behavior broadly refers to any behavior exhibited or enacted by a user that can be electronically observed.

Cyber behavior, as used herein, broadly refers to any behavior occurring in cyberspace, whether enacted by an individual user, a group of users, or a system acting at the behest of an individual user, a group of users, or an entity. More particularly, cyber behavior may include physical, social, or mental actions that can be objectively observed, or indirectly inferred, within cyberspace. As an example, a user may use an endpoint device 304 to access and browse a particular website on the Internet. In this example, the individual actions performed by the user to access and browse the website constitute a cyber behavior. As another example, a user may use an endpoint device 304 to download a data file from a particular system at a particular point in time. In this example, the individual actions performed by the user to download the data file, and associated temporal information, such as a time-stamp associated with the download, constitute a cyber behavior. In these examples, the actions are enacted within cyberspace, in combination with associated temporal information, makes them electronically-observable.

As likewise used herein, cyberspace broadly refers to a network 140 environment capable of supporting communication between two or more entities. In certain embodiments, the entity may be a user, an endpoint device 304, or various resources, described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the entities may include various endpoint devices 304 or resources operating at the behest of an entity, such as a user. In certain embodiments, the communication between the entities may include audio, image, video, text, or binary data.

As described in greater detail herein, the contextual information may include an entity's authentication factors. Contextual information may likewise include various temporal identity resolution factors, such as identification factors associated with the entity, the date/time/frequency of various entity behaviors, the entity's location, the entity's role or position in an organization, their associated access rights, and certain user gestures employed by the user in the enactment of a user behavior. Other contextual information may likewise include various user interactions, whether the interactions are with an endpoint device 304, a network 140, a resource, or another user. In certain embodiments, user behaviors, and their related contextual information, may be collected at particular points of observation, and at particular points in time, described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, a protected endpoint 302 may be implemented as a point of observation for the collection of entity behavior and contextual information.

In certain embodiments, the endpoint agent 306 may be implemented to universally support a variety of operating systems, such as Apple Macintosh®, Microsoft Windows®, Linux®, Android® and so forth. In certain embodiments, the endpoint agent 306 may be implemented to interact with the endpoint device 304 through the use of low-level hooks 312 at the operating system level. It will be appreciated that the use of low-level hooks 312 allows the endpoint agent 306 to subscribe to multiple events through a single hook. Consequently, multiple functionalities provided by the endpoint agent 306 can share a single data stream, using only those portions of the data stream they may individually need. Accordingly, system efficiency can be improved and operational overhead reduced.

In certain embodiments, the endpoint agent 306 may be implemented to provide a common infrastructure for pluggable feature packs 308. In various embodiments, the pluggable feature packs 308 may provide certain security management functionalities. Examples of such functionalities may include various anti-virus and malware detection, data loss protection (DLP), insider threat detection, and so forth. In certain embodiments, the security management functionalities may include one or more functionalities associated with providing real-time resolution of the identity of an entity at a particular point in time, as described in greater detail herein.

In certain embodiments, a particular pluggable feature pack 308 may be invoked as needed by the endpoint agent 306 to provide a given functionality. In certain embodiments, individual features of a particular pluggable feature pack 308 are invoked as needed. It will be appreciated that the ability to invoke individual features of a pluggable feature pack 308, without necessarily invoking all such features, will likely improve the operational efficiency of the endpoint agent 306 while simultaneously reducing operational overhead. Accordingly, the endpoint agent 306 can self-optimize in certain embodiments by using the common infrastructure and invoking only those pluggable components that are applicable or needed for a given user behavior.

In certain embodiments, the individual features of a pluggable feature pack 308 are invoked by the endpoint agent 306 according to the occurrence of a particular user behavior. In certain embodiments, the individual features of a pluggable feature pack 308 are invoked by the endpoint agent 306 according to the occurrence of a particular temporal event, described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the individual features of a pluggable feature pack 308 are invoked by the endpoint agent 306 at a particular point in time. In these embodiments, the method by which a given user behavior, temporal event, or point in time is selected is a matter of design choice.

In certain embodiments, the individual features of a pluggable feature pack 308 may be invoked by the endpoint agent 306 according to the context of a particular user behavior. As an example, the context may be the user enacting the user behavior, their associated risk classification, which resource they may be requesting, the point in time the user behavior is enacted, and so forth. In certain embodiments, the pluggable feature packs 308 may be sourced from various cloud services 206. In certain embodiments, the pluggable feature packs 308 may be dynamically sourced from various cloud services 206 by the endpoint agent 306 on an as-needed basis.

In certain embodiments, the endpoint agent 306 may be implemented with additional functionalities, such as event analytics 310. In certain embodiments, the event analytics 310 functionality may include analysis of various user behaviors, described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the endpoint agent 306 may be implemented with a thin hypervisor 314, which can be run at Ring −1, thereby providing protection for the endpoint agent 306 in the event of a breach. As used herein, a thin hypervisor broadly refers to a simplified, OS-dependent hypervisor implemented to increase security. As likewise used herein, Ring −1 broadly refers to approaches allowing guest operating systems to run Ring 0 (i.e., kernel) operations without affecting other guests or the host OS. Those of skill in the art will recognize that many such embodiments and examples are possible. Accordingly, the foregoing is not intended to limit the spirit, scope or intent of the invention.

FIG. 4 is a simplified block diagram of a security analytics system implemented in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 shown in FIG. 4 may include an event queue analytics 404 module, described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the event queue analytics 404 sub-system may be implemented to include an enrichment 406 module and a streaming analytics 408 module. In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to provide log storage, reporting, and analytics capable of performing streaming 408 and on-demand 410 analytics operations. In certain embodiments, such operations may be associated with defining and managing an adaptive trust profile (ATP), detecting entity behavior that may be of analytic utility, adaptively responding to mitigate risk, or a combination thereof, as described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, entity behavior of analytic utility may be determined to be anomalous, abnormal, unexpected, malicious, or some combination thereof, as described in greater detail herein.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to provide a uniform platform for storing events and contextual information associated with various entity behaviors and performing longitudinal analytics. As used herein, longitudinal analytics broadly refers to performing analytics of entity behaviors occurring over a particular period of time. As an example, an entity may iteratively attempt to access certain proprietary information stored in various locations. In addition, the attempts may occur over a brief period of time. To continue the example, the fact that the information the user is attempting to access is proprietary, that it is stored in various locations, and the attempts are occurring in a brief period of time, in combination, may indicate the entity behavior enacted by the entity is suspicious. As another example, certain entity identifier information (e.g., a user name) associated with an entity may change over time. In this example, a change in the entity's user name, during a particular time period or at a particular point in time, may represent suspicious entity behavior.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to be scalable. In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented in a centralized location, such as a corporate data center. In these embodiments, additional resources may be added to the security analytics system 118 as needs grow. In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented as a distributed system. In these embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may span multiple information handling systems. In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented in a cloud environment. In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented in a virtual machine (VM) environment. In such embodiments, the VM environment may be configured to dynamically and seamlessly scale the security analytics system 118 as needed. Skilled practitioners of the art will recognize that many such embodiments are possible. Accordingly, the foregoing is not intended to limit the spirit, scope or intent of the invention.

In certain embodiments, an event stream collector 402 may be implemented to collect event and related contextual information, described in greater detail herein, associated with various entity behaviors. In these embodiments, the method by which the event and contextual information is selected to be collected by the event stream collector 402 is a matter of design choice. In certain embodiments, the event and contextual information collected by the event stream collector 402 may be processed by an enrichment module 406 to generate enriched entity behavior information. In certain embodiments, the enrichment may include certain contextual information related to a particular entity behavior or event. In certain embodiments, the enrichment may include certain temporal information, such as timestamp information, related to a particular entity behavior or event.

In certain embodiments, enriched entity behavior information may be provided by the enrichment module 406 to a streaming 408 analytics module. In turn, the streaming 408 analytics module may provide some or all of the enriched entity behavior information to an on-demand 410 analytics module. As used herein, streaming 408 analytics broadly refers to analytics performed in near real-time on enriched entity behavior information as it is received. Likewise, on-demand 410 analytics broadly refers herein to analytics performed, as they are requested, on enriched entity behavior information after it has been received. In certain embodiments, the enriched entity behavior information may be associated with a particular event. In certain embodiments, the enrichment 406 and streaming analytics 408 modules may be implemented to perform event queue analytics 404 operations, as described in greater detail herein.

In certain embodiments, the on-demand 410 analytics may be performed on enriched entity behavior associated with a particular interval of, or point in, time. In certain embodiments, the streaming 408 or on-demand 410 analytics may be performed on enriched entity behavior associated with a particular user, group of users, one or more non-user entities, or a combination thereof. In certain embodiments, the streaming 408 or on-demand 410 analytics may be performed on enriched entity behavior associated with a particular resource, such as a facility, system, datastore, or service. Those of skill in the art will recognize that many such embodiments are possible. Accordingly, the foregoing is not intended to limit the spirit, scope or intent of the invention.

In certain embodiments, the results of various analytics operations performed by the streaming 408 or on-demand 410 analytics modules may be provided to a storage Application Program Interface (API) 414. In turn, the storage API 412 may be implemented to provide access to various datastores ‘1’ 416 through ‘n’ 418, which in turn are used to store the results of the analytics operations. In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented with a logging and reporting front-end 412, which is used to receive the results of analytics operations performed by the streaming 408 analytics module. In certain embodiments, the datastores ‘1’ 416 through ‘n’ 418 may variously include a datastore of entity identifiers, temporal events, or a combination thereof.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may include a risk scoring 420 module implemented to perform risk scoring operations, described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, functionalities of the risk scoring 420 module may be provided in the form of a risk management service 422. In certain embodiments, the risk management service 422 may be implemented to perform operations associated with defining and managing an adaptive trust profile (ATP), as described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the risk management service 422 may be implemented to perform operations associated with detecting entity behavior that may be of analytic utility and adaptively responding to mitigate risk, as described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the risk management service 422 may be implemented to provide the results of various analytics operations performed by the streaming 406 or on-demand 408 analytics modules. In certain embodiments, the risk management service 422 may be implemented to use the storage API 412 to access various enhanced cyber behavior and analytics information stored on the datastores ‘1’ 414 through ‘n’ 416. Skilled practitioners of the art will recognize that many such embodiments are possible. Accordingly, the foregoing is not intended to limit the spirit, scope or intent of the invention.

FIG. 5 is a simplified block diagram of the operation of a security analytics system implemented in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 512 may be implemented to perform operations associated with providing real-time resolution of the identity of an entity at a particular point in time. In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 512 may be implemented in combination with one or more endpoint agents 306, one or more edge devices 202, cloud services 206, and a security analytics system 512, and a network 140 to perform such operations.

In certain embodiments, the network edge device 202 may be implemented in a bridge, a firewall, or a passive monitoring configuration. In certain embodiments, the edge device 202 may be implemented as software running on an information processing system. In certain embodiments, the network edge device 202 may be implemented to provide integrated logging, updating and control. In certain embodiments, the edge device 202 may be implemented to receive network requests and context-sensitive cyber behavior information in the form of enriched cyber behavior information 510, described in greater detail herein, from an endpoint agent 306, likewise described in greater detail herein.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 512 may be implemented as both a source and a sink of entity behavior information. In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 512 may be implemented to serve requests for user/resource risk data. In certain embodiments, the edge device 202 and the endpoint agent 306, individually or in combination, may provide certain entity behavior information to the security analytics system 512 using either push or pull approaches familiar to skilled practitioners of the art.

As described in greater detail herein, the edge device 202 may be implemented in certain embodiments to receive enriched user behavior information 510 from the endpoint agent 306. It will be appreciated that such enriched user behavior information 510 will likely not be available for provision to the edge device 202 when an endpoint agent 306 is not implemented for a corresponding endpoint device 304. However, the lack of such enriched user behavior information 510 may be accommodated in various embodiments, albeit with reduced functionality associated with operations associated with providing real-time resolution of the identity of an entity at a particular point in time.

In certain embodiments, a given user behavior may be enriched by an associated endpoint agent 306 attaching contextual information to a request. In one embodiment, the context is embedded within a network request, which is then provided as enriched user behavior information 510. In another embodiment, the contextual information is concatenated, or appended, to a request, which in turn is provided as enriched user behavior information 510. In these embodiments, the enriched user behavior information 510 is unpacked upon receipt and parsed to separate the request and its associated contextual information. Those of skill in the art will recognize that one possible disadvantage of such an approach is that it may perturb certain Intrusion Detection System and/or Intrusion Detection Prevention (IDS/IDP) systems implemented on a network 140.

In certain embodiments, new flow requests are accompanied by a contextual information packet sent to the edge device 202. In these embodiments, the new flow requests may be provided as enriched user behavior information 510. In certain embodiments, the endpoint agent 306 may also send updated contextual information to the edge device 202 once it becomes available. As an example, an endpoint agent 306 may share a list of files that have been read by a current process at any point in time once the information has been collected. To continue the example, such a list of files may be used to determine which data the endpoint agent 306 may be attempting to exfiltrate.

In certain embodiments, point analytics processes executing on the edge device 202 may request a particular service. As an example, risk scores on a per-user basis may be requested. In certain embodiments, the service may be requested from the security analytics system 512. In certain embodiments, the service may be requested from various cloud services 206.

In certain embodiments, contextual information associated with a user behavior may be attached to various network service requests. In certain embodiments, the request may be wrapped and then handled by proxy. In certain embodiments, a small packet of contextual information associated with a user behavior may be sent with a service request. In certain embodiments, service requests may be related to Domain Name Service (DNS), web, email, and so forth, all of which are essentially requests for service by an endpoint device 304. In certain embodiments, such service requests may be associated with temporal event information, described in greater detail herein. Consequently, such requests can be enriched by the addition of user behavior contextual information (e.g., UserAccount, interactive/automated, data-touched, temporal event information, etc.). Accordingly, the edge device 202 can then use this information to manage the appropriate response to submitted requests. In certain embodiments, such requests may be associated with providing real-time resolution of the identity of an entity at a particular point in time.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 512 may be implemented in different operational configurations. In one embodiment, the security analytics system 512 may be implemented by using the endpoint agent 306. In another embodiment, the security analytics system 512 may be implemented by using endpoint agent 306 in combination with the edge device 202. In certain embodiments, the cloud services 206 may likewise be implemented for use by the endpoint agent 306, the edge device 202, and the security analytics system 512, individually or in combination. In these embodiments, the security analytics system 512 may be primarily oriented to performing risk assessment operations related to user actions, program actions, data accesses, or a combination thereof. In certain embodiments, program actions may be treated as a proxy for the user.

In certain embodiments, the endpoint agent 306 may be implemented to update the security analytics system 512 with user behavior and associated contextual information, thereby allowing an offload of certain analytics processing overhead. In one embodiment, this approach allows for longitudinal risk scoring, which assesses risk associated with certain user behavior during a particular interval of time. In another embodiment, the security analytics system 512 may be implemented to allow the risk-adaptive behavior system to access risk scores associated with the same user account, but accrued on different endpoint devices 304. It will be appreciated that such an approach may prove advantageous when an adversary is “moving sideways” through a network environment, using different endpoint devices 304 to collect information.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 512 may be primarily oriented to applying risk mitigations in a way that maximizes security effort return-on-investment (ROI). In certain embodiments, the approach may be accomplished by providing additional contextual and user behavior information associated with user requests. As an example, a web gateway may not concern itself with why a particular file is being requested by a certain entity at a particular point in time. Accordingly, if the file cannot be identified as malicious or harmless, there is no context available to determine how, or if, to proceed.

To extend the example, the edge device 202 and security analytics system 512 may be coupled such that requests can be contextualized and fitted into a framework that evaluates their associated risk. It will be appreciated that such an embodiment works well with web-based data loss protection (DLP) approaches, as each transfer is no longer examined in isolation, but in the broader context of an identified user's actions, at a particular time, on the network 140.

As another example, the security analytics system 512 may be implemented to perform risk scoring processes to decide whether to block or allow unusual flows. It will be appreciated that such an approach is highly applicable to defending against point-of-sale (POS) malware, a breach technique that has become increasingly more common in recent years. It will likewise be appreciated that while various edge device 202 implementations may not stop all such exfiltrations, they may be able to complicate the task for the attacker.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 512 may be primarily oriented to maximally leverage contextual information associated with various user behaviors within the system. In certain embodiments, data flow tracking is performed by one or more endpoint agents 306, which allows the quantity and type of information associated with particular hosts to be measured. In turn, this information may be used to determine how the edge device 202 handles requests. By contextualizing such user behavior on the network 140, the risk-adaptive behavior system can provide intelligent protection, making decisions that make sense in the broader context of an organization's activities. It will be appreciated that one advantage to such an approach is that information flowing through an organization, and the networks they employ, should be trackable, and substantial data breaches preventable. Skilled practitioners of the art will recognize that many such embodiments and examples are possible. Accordingly, the foregoing is not intended to limit the spirit, scope or intent of the invention.

FIG. 6 shows a simplified block diagram of an entity behavior profile (EBP) implemented in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. As used herein, an entity behavior profile 638 broadly refers to a collection of information that uniquely describes a particular entity's identity and their associated behavior, whether the behavior occurs within a physical realm or cyberspace. In certain embodiments, an EBP 638 may be used to adaptively draw inferences regarding the trustworthiness of a particular entity. In certain embodiments, as described in greater detail herein, the drawing of the inferences may involve comparing a new entity behavior to known past behaviors enacted by the entity. In certain embodiments, new entity behavior of analytic utility may represent entity behavior that represents a security risk. As likewise used herein, an entity broadly refers to something that exists as itself, whether physically or abstractly. In certain embodiments, an entity may be a user entity, a non-user entity, or a combination thereof. In certain embodiments, the identity of an entity may be known or unknown.

As used herein, a user entity broadly refers to an entity capable of enacting a user entity behavior, as described in greater detail herein. Examples of a user entity include an individual person, a group of people, an organization, or a government. As likewise used herein, a non-user entity broadly refers to an entity whose identity can be described and may exhibit certain behavior, but is incapable of enacting a user entity behavior. Examples of a non-user entity include an item, a device, such as endpoint and edge devices, a network, an account, a domain, an operation, a process, and an event. Other examples of a non-user entity include a resource, such as a geographical location or formation, a physical facility, a venue, a system, a software application, a data store, and a service, such as a service operating in a cloud environment.

Certain embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation that being able to uniquely identity a device may assist in establishing whether or not a particular login is legitimate. As an example, user impersonations may not occur at the user's endpoint, but instead, from another device or system. Certain embodiments of the invention likewise reflect an appreciation that profiling the entity behavior of a particular device or system may assist in determining whether or not it is acting suspiciously.

In certain embodiments, an account may be local account, which runs on a single machine. In certain embodiments, an account may be a global account, providing access to multiple resources. In certain embodiments, a process may be implemented to run in an unattended mode, such as when backing up files or checking for software updates. Certain embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation that it is often advantageous to track events at the process level as a method of determining which events are associated with background processes and which are initiated by a user entity.

In certain embodiments, an EBP 638 may be implemented to include a user entity profile 602, an associated user entity mindset profile 630, a non-user entity profile 632, and an entity state 636. As used herein, a user entity profile 602 broadly refers to a collection of information that uniquely describes a user entity's identity and their associated behavior, whether the behavior occurs within a physical realm or cyberspace. In certain embodiments, as described in greater detail herein, the user entity profile 602 may include user profile attributes 604, user behavior factors 610, user mindset factors 622, or a combination thereof. In certain embodiments, the user profile attributes 604 may include certain user authentication factors 606, described in greater detail herein, and personal information 608.

As used herein, a user profile attribute 604 broadly refers to data or metadata that can be used, individually or in combination with other user profile attributes 604, user behavior factors 610, or user mindset factors 622, to ascertain the identity of a user entity. In various embodiments, certain user profile attributes 604 may be uniquely associated with a particular user entity. In certain embodiments, the personal information 608 may include non-sensitive personal information associated with a user entity, such as their name, title, position, role, and responsibilities. In certain embodiments, the personal information 608 may likewise include technical skill level information, peer information, expense account information, paid time off (PTO) information, data analysis information, insider information, misconfiguration information, third party information, or a combination thereof. In certain embodiments, the personal information 608 may contain sensitive personal information associated with a user entity. As used herein, sensitive personal information (SPI), also commonly referred to as personally identifiable information (PII), broadly refers to any information usable to ascertain the identity of a user entity, either by itself, or in combination with other information, such as contextual information described in greater detail herein.

Examples of SPI may include the full or legal name of a user entity, initials or nicknames, place and date of birth, home and business addresses, personal and business telephone numbers, their gender, and other genetic information. Additional examples of SPI may include government-issued identifiers, such as a Social Security Number (SSN) or a passport number, vehicle registration plate and serial numbers, and driver's license numbers. Other examples of SPI may include certain email addresses and social media identifiers, credit and debit card numbers, and other digital identity information. Yet other examples of SPI may include employer-issued identifiers, financial transaction information, credit scores, electronic medical records (EMRs), insurance claim information, personal correspondence, and so forth. Further examples of SPI may include user authentication factors 606, such as biometrics, user identifiers and passwords, and personal identification numbers (PINs).

In certain embodiments, the SPI may include information considered by an individual user, a group of users, or an organization (e.g., a company, a government or non-government organization, etc.), to be confidential or proprietary. One example of such confidential information is protected health information (PHI). As used herein, PHI broadly refers to any information associated with the health status, provision of health care, or payment for health care that is created or collected by a “covered entity,” or an associate thereof, that can be linked to a particular individual. As used herein, a “covered entity” broadly refers to health plans, healthcare clearinghouses, healthcare providers, and others, who may electronically communicate any health-related information associated with a particular individual. Examples of such PHI may include any part of a patient's medical record, healthcare record, or payment history for medical or healthcare services.

As used herein, a user behavior factor 610 broadly refers to information associated with a user entity's behavior, whether the behavior occurs within a physical realm or cyberspace. In certain embodiments, user behavior factors 610 may include the user entity's access rights 612, the user entity's interactions 614, and the date/time/frequency 616 of when the interactions 614 are enacted. In certain embodiments, the user behavior factors 610 may likewise include the user entity's location 618, and the gestures 620 used by the user entity to enact the interactions 614.

In certain embodiments, the user entity gestures 620 may include key strokes on a keypad, a cursor movement, a mouse movement or click, a finger swipe, tap, or other hand gesture, an eye movement, or some combination thereof. In certain embodiments, the user entity gestures 620 may likewise include the cadence of the user's keystrokes, the motion, force and duration of a hand or finger gesture, the rapidity and direction of various eye movements, or some combination thereof. In certain embodiments, the user entity gestures 620 may include various audio or verbal commands performed by the user.

As used herein, user mindset factors 622 broadly refer to information used to make inferences regarding the mental state of a user entity at a particular point in time, during the occurrence of an event or an enactment of a user behavior, or a combination thereof. As likewise used herein, mental state broadly refers to a hypothetical state corresponding to the way a user entity may be thinking or feeling. Likewise, as used herein, an event broadly refers to the occurrence of an action performed by an entity. In certain embodiments, the user entity mindset factors 622 may include a personality type 624. Examples of known approaches for determining a personality type 624 include Jungian types, Myers-Briggs type indicators, Keirsey Temperament Sorter, Socionics, Enneagram of Personality, and Eyseneck's three-factor model.

In certain embodiments, the user mindset factors 622 may include various behavioral biometrics 626. As used herein, a behavioral biometric 628 broadly refers to a physiological indication of a user entity's mental state. Examples of behavioral biometrics 626 may include a user entity's blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, eye movements and iris dilation, facial expressions, body language, tone and pitch of voice, speech patterns, and so forth.

Certain embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation that certain user behavior factors 610, such as user entity gestures 620, may provide additional information related to inferring a user entity's mental state. As an example, a user entering text at a quick pace with a rhythmic cadence may indicate intense focus. Likewise, an individual user intermittently entering text with forceful keystrokes may indicate the user is in an agitated state. As another example, the user may intermittently enter text somewhat languorously, which may indicate being in a thoughtful or reflective state of mind. As yet another example, the user may enter text with a light touch with an uneven cadence, which may indicate the user is hesitant or unsure of what is being entered.

Certain embodiments of the invention likewise reflect an appreciation that while the user entity gestures 620 may provide certain indications of the mental state of a particular user entity, they may not provide the reason for the user entity to be in a particular mental state. Likewise, certain embodiments of the invention include an appreciation that certain user entity gestures 620 and behavioral biometrics 626 are reflective of an individual user's personality type 624. As an example, aggressive, forceful keystrokes combined with an increased heart rate may indicate normal behavior for a particular user when composing end-of-month performance reviews. In various embodiments, certain user entity behavior factors 610, such as user gestures 620, may be correlated with certain contextual information, as described in greater detail herein.

In certain embodiments, a security analytics system 118, described in greater detail herein, may be implemented to include an entity behavior catalog (EBC) system 120. In certain embodiments, the EBC system 120 may be implemented to generate, manage, store, or some combination thereof, information related to the behavior of an associated entity. In various embodiments, the EBC system 120 may be implemented as a cyber behavior catalog. In certain of these embodiments, the cyber behavior catalog may be implemented to generate, manage, store, or some combination thereof, information related to cyber behavior, described in greater detail herein, enacted by an associated entity. In various embodiments, as likewise described in greater detail herein, the information generated, managed, stored, or some combination thereof, by such a cyber behavior catalog, may be related to cyber behavior enacted by a user entity, a non-user entity, or a combination thereof.

In certain embodiments, the EBC system 120 may be implemented to use a user entity profile 602 in combination with an entity state 636 to generate a user entity mindset profile 630. As used herein, entity state 636 broadly refers to the context of a particular event or entity behavior. In certain embodiments, the entity state 636 may be a long-term entity state or a short-term entity state. As used herein, a long-term entity state 636 broadly relates to an entity state 636 that persists for an extended interval of time, such as six months or a year. As likewise used herein, a short-term entity state 636 broadly relates to an entity state 636 that occurs for a brief interval of time, such as a few minutes or a day. In various embodiments, the method by which an entity state's 636 associated interval of time is considered to be long-term or short-term is a matter of design choice.

As an example, a particular user may have a primary work location, such as a branch office, and a secondary work location, such as their company's corporate office. In this example, the user's primary and secondary offices respectively correspond to the user's location 618, whereas the presence of the user at either office corresponds to an entity state 636. To continue the example, the user may consistently work at their primary office Monday through Thursday, but at their company's corporate office on Fridays. To further continue the example, the user's presence at their primary work location may be a long-term entity state 636, while their presence at their secondary work location may be a short-term entity state 636. Accordingly, a date/time/frequency 616 user entity behavior factor 610 can likewise be associated with user behavior respectively enacted on those days, regardless of their corresponding locations. Consequently, the long-term user entity state 636 on Monday through Thursday will typically be “working at the branch office” and the short-term entity state 636 on Friday will likely be “working at the corporate office.”

As likewise used herein, a user entity mindset profile 630 broadly refers to a collection of information that reflects an inferred mental state of a user entity at a particular time during the occurrence of an event or an enactment of a user behavior. As an example, certain information may be known about a user entity, such as their name, their title and position, and so forth, all of which are user profile attributes 604. Likewise, it may be possible to observe a user entity's associated user behavior factors 610, such as their interactions with various systems, when they log-in and log-out, when they are active at the keyboard, the rhythm of their keystrokes, and which files they typically use.

Certain embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation these behavior factors 610 can be considered to be a behavioral fingerprint. In certain embodiments, the user behavior factors 610 may change, a little or a lot, from day to day. These changes may be benign, such as when a user entity begins a new project and accesses new data, or they may indicate something more concerning, such as a user entity who is actively preparing to steal data from their employer. In certain embodiments, the user behavior factors 610 may be implemented to ascertain the identity of a user entity. In certain embodiments, the user behavior factors 610 may be uniquely associated with a particular entity.

In certain embodiments, observed user behaviors may be used to build a user entity profile 602 for a particular user or other entity. In addition to creating a model of a user's various attributes and observed behaviors, these observations can likewise be used to infer things that are not necessarily explicit. Accordingly, in certain embodiments, a behavioral fingerprint may be used in combination with an EBP 638 to generate an inference regarding an associated user entity. As an example, a particular user may be observed eating a meal, which may or may not indicate the user is hungry. However, if it is also known that the user worked at their desk throughout lunchtime and is now eating a snack during a mid-afternoon break, then it can be inferred they are indeed hungry.

As likewise used herein, a non-user entity profile 632 broadly refers to a collection of information that uniquely describes a non-user entity's identity and their associated behavior, whether the behavior occurs within a physical realm or cyberspace. In various embodiments, the non-user entity profile 632 may be implemented to include certain non-user profile attributes 634. As used herein, a non-user profile attribute 634 broadly refers to data or metadata that can be used, individually or in combination with other non-user profile attributes 634, to ascertain the identity of a non-user entity. In various embodiments, certain non-user profile attributes 634 may be uniquely associated with a particular non-user entity.

In certain embodiments, the non-user profile attributes 634 may be implemented to include certain identity information, such as a non-user entity's network, Media Access Control (MAC), or physical address, its serial number, associated configuration information, and so forth. In various embodiments, the non-user profile attributes 634 may be implemented to include non-user behavior information associated with interactions between certain user and non-user entities, the type of those interactions, the data exchanged during the interactions, the date/time/frequency of such interactions, and certain services accessed or provided.

In various embodiments, the EBC system 120 may be implemented to use certain data associated with an EBP 638 to provide a probabilistic measure of whether a particular electronically-observable event is of analytic utility. In certain embodiments, an electronically-observable event that is of analytic utility may be determined to be anomalous, abnormal, unexpected, or malicious. To continue the prior example, a user may typically work out of their company's corporate office on Fridays. Furthermore, various user mindset factors 622 within their associated user entity profile 602 may indicate that the user is typically relaxed and methodical when working with customer data. Moreover, the user's user entity profile 602 indicates that such user interactions 614 with customer data typically occur on Monday mornings and the user rarely, if ever, copies or downloads customer data. However, the user may decide to interact with certain customer data late at night, on a Friday, while in their company's corporate office. As they do so, they exhibit an increased heart rate, rapid breathing, and furtive keystrokes while downloading a subset of customer data to a flash drive.

Consequently, their user entity mindset profile 630 may reflect a nervous, fearful, or guilty mindset, which is inconsistent with the entity state 634 of dealing with customer data in general. More particularly, downloading customer data late at night on a day the user is generally not in their primary office results in an entity state 634 that is likewise inconsistent with the user's typical user behavior. As a result, the EBC system 120 may infer that the user's behavior may represent a security threat. Those of skill in the art will recognize that many such embodiments and examples are possible. Accordingly, the foregoing is not intended to limit the spirit, scope or intent of the invention.

Certain embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation that the quantity, and relevancy, of information contained in a particular EBP 638 may have a direct bearing on its analytic utility when attempting to determine the trustworthiness of an associated entity and whether or not they represent a security risk. As used herein, the quantity of information contained in a particular EBP 638 broadly refers to the variety and volume of EBP elements it may contain, and the frequency of their respective instances, or occurrences, related to certain aspects of an associated entity's identity and behavior. As used herein, an EBP element broadly refers to any data element stored in an EBP 638, as described in greater detail herein. In various embodiments, an EBP element may be used to describe a particular aspect of an EBP, such as certain user profile attributes 604, user behavior factors 610, user mindset factors 622, user entity mindset profile 630, non-user profile attributes 634, and entity state 636.

In certain embodiments, statistical analysis may be performed on the information contained in a particular EBP 638 to determine the trustworthiness of its associated entity and whether or not they represent a security risk. For example, a particular authentication factor 606, such as a biometric, may be consistently used by a user entity for authenticating their identity to their endpoint device. To continue the example, a user ID and password may be used by the same, or a different user entity, in an attempt to access the endpoint device. As a result, the use of a user ID and password may indicate a security risk due to its statistical infrequency. As another example, a user entity may consistently access three different systems on a daily basis in their role as a procurement agent. In this example, the three systems may include a financial accounting system, a procurement system, and an inventory control system. To continue the example, an attempt by the procurement agent to access a sales forecast system may appear suspicious if never attempted before, even if the purpose for accessing the system is legitimate.

As likewise used herein, the relevancy of information contained in a particular EBP 638 broadly refers to the pertinence of the EBP elements it may contain to certain aspects of an associated entity's identity and behavior. To continue the prior example, an EBP 638 associated with the procurement agent may contain certain user profile attributes 604 related to their title, position, role, and responsibilities, all or which may be pertinent to whether or not they have a legitimate need to access the sales forecast system. In certain embodiments, the user profile attributes 604 may be implemented to include certain job description information. To further continue the example, such job description information may have relevance when attempting to determine whether or not the associated entity's behavior is suspicious. In further continuance of the example, job description information related to the procurement agent may include their responsibility to check sales forecast data, as needed, to ascertain whether or not to procure certain items. In these embodiments, the method by which it is determined whether the information contained in a particular EBP 638 is of sufficient quantity and relevancy is a matter of design choice.

Various embodiments of the invention likewise reflect an appreciation that accumulating sufficient information in an EBP 638 to make such a determination may take a certain amount of time. Likewise, various embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation that the effectiveness or accuracy of such a determination may rely upon certain entity behaviors occurring with sufficient frequency, or in identifiable patterns, or a combination thereof, during a particular period of time. As an example, there may not be sufficient occurrences of a particular type of entity behavior to determine if a new entity behavior is inconsistent with known past occurrences of the same type of entity behavior. Accordingly, various embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation that a sparsely-populated EBP 638 may likewise result in exposure to certain security vulnerabilities. Furthermore, the relevance of such sparsely-populated information initially contained in an EBP 638 first implemented may not prove very useful when using an EBP 638 to determine the trustworthiness of an associated entity and whether or not they represent a security risk.

FIGS. 7a and 7b show a block diagram of a security analytics environment implemented in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In certain embodiments, a security analytics system 118 may be implemented with an entity behavior catalog (EBC) system 120, an event preprocessing system 122, and an entity resolution system 124, or a combination thereof. In certain embodiments, analyses performed by the security analytics system 118 may be used to identify behavior associated with a particular entity that may be of analytic utility. In certain embodiments, as likewise described in greater detail herein, the EBC system 120 may be used in combination with the security analytics system 120 to perform such analyses. In various embodiments, certain data stored in a repository of security analytics data, or a repository of EBC data 690, or both, may be used by the security analytics system 118, or the EBC system 120, or both, to perform the analyses.

In certain embodiments, the entity behavior of analytic utility may be identified at a particular point in time, during the occurrence of an event, the enactment of a user or non-user entity behavior, or a combination thereof. As used herein, an entity broadly refers to something that exists as itself, whether physically or abstractly. In certain embodiments, an entity may be a user entity, a non-user entity, or a combination thereof. In certain embodiments, a user entity may be an individual user, such as user ‘A’ 702 or ‘B’ 772, a group, an organization, or a government. In certain embodiments, a non-user entity may likewise be an item, a device, such as endpoint 304 and edge 202 devices, a network, such as an internal 744 and external 746 networks, a domain, an operation, or a process. In certain embodiments, a non-user entity may be a resource 750, such as a geographical location or formation, a physical facility 752, such as a venue, various physical security devices 754, a system 756, shared devices 758, such as printer, scanner, or copier, a data store 760, or a service 762, such as a service 762 operating in a cloud environment.

As likewise used herein, an event broadly refers to the occurrence of an action performed by an entity. In certain embodiments, the action may be directly associated with an entity behavior, described in greater detail herein. As an example, a first user may attach a binary file infected with a virus to an email that is subsequently sent to a second user. In this example, the act of attaching the binary file to the email is directly associated with an entity behavior enacted by the first user. In certain embodiments, the action may be indirectly associated with an entity behavior. To continue the example, the recipient of the email may open the infected binary file, and as a result, infect their computer with malware. To further continue the example, the act of opening the infected binary file is directly associated with an entity behavior enacted by the second user. However, the infection of the email recipient's computer by the infected binary file is indirectly associated with the described entity behavior enacted by the second user.

In various embodiments, certain user authentication factors 606 may be used to authenticate the identity of a user entity. In certain embodiments, the user authentication factors 606 may be used to ensure that a particular user entity, such as user ‘A’ 702 or ‘B’ 772, is associated with their corresponding user entity profile 602, rather than a user entity profile 602 associated with another user. In certain embodiments, the user authentication factors 606 may include a user's biometrics 706 (e.g., a fingerprint or retinal scan), tokens 708 (e.g., a dongle containing cryptographic keys), user identifiers and passwords (ID/PW) 710, and personal identification numbers (PINs).

In certain embodiments, information associated with such user entity behavior may be stored in a user entity profile 602, described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the user entity profile 602 may be stored in a repository of entity behavior catalog (EBC) data 690. In certain embodiments, as likewise described in greater detail herein, the user entity profile 602 may include user profile attributes 604, user behavior factors 610, user mindset factors 622, or a combination thereof. As used herein, a user profile attribute 604 broadly refers to data or metadata that can be used, individually or in combination with other user profile attributes 604, user behavior factors 610, or user mindset factors 622, to ascertain the identity of a user entity. In various embodiments, certain user profile attributes 604 may be uniquely associated with a particular user entity.

As likewise used herein, a user behavior factor 610 broadly refers to information associated with a user's behavior, whether the behavior occurs within a physical realm or cyberspace. In certain embodiments, the user behavior factors 610 may include the user's access rights 612, the user's interactions 614, and the date/time/frequency 616 of those interactions 614. In certain embodiments, the user behavior factors 610 may likewise include the user's location 618 when the interactions 614 are enacted, and the user gestures 620 used to enact the interactions 614.

In various embodiments, certain date/time/frequency 616 user behavior factors 610 may be implemented as ontological or societal time, or a combination thereof. As used herein, ontological time broadly refers to how one instant in time relates to another in a chronological sense. As an example, a first user behavior enacted at 12:00 noon on May 17, 2017 may occur prior to a second user behavior enacted at 6:39 PM on May 18, 2018. Skilled practitioners of the art will recognize one value of ontological time is to determine the order in which various user behaviors have been enacted.

As likewise used herein, societal time broadly refers to the correlation of certain user profile attributes 604, user behavior factors 610, user mindset factors 622, or a combination thereof, to one or more instants in time. As an example, user ‘A’ 702 may access a particular system 756 to download a customer list at 3:47 PM on Nov. 3, 2017. Analysis of their user behavior profile indicates that it is not unusual for user ‘A’ 702 to download the customer list on a weekly basis. However, examination of their user behavior profile also indicates that user ‘A’ 702 forwarded the downloaded customer list in an email message to user ‘B’ 772 at 3:49 PM that same day. Furthermore, there is no record in their user behavior profile that user ‘A’ 702 has ever communicated with user ‘B’ 772 in the past. Moreover, it may be determined that user ‘B’ 872 is employed by a competitor. Accordingly, the correlation of user ‘A’ 702 downloading the customer list at one point in time, and then forwarding the customer list to user ‘B’ 772 at a second point in time shortly thereafter, is an example of societal time.

In a variation of the prior example, user ‘A’ 702 may download the customer list at 3:47 PM on Nov. 3, 2017. However, instead of immediately forwarding the customer list to user ‘B’ 772, user ‘A’ 702 leaves for a two week vacation. Upon their return, they forward the previously-downloaded customer list to user ‘B’ 772 at 9:14 AM on Nov. 20, 2017. From an ontological time perspective, it has been two weeks since user ‘A’ 702 accessed the system 756 to download the customer list. However, from a societal time perspective, they have still forwarded the customer list to user ‘B’ 772, despite two weeks having elapsed since the customer list was originally downloaded.

Accordingly, the correlation of user ‘A’ 702 downloading the customer list at one point in time, and then forwarding the customer list to user ‘B’ 772 at a much later point in time, is another example of societal time. More particularly, it may be inferred that the intent of user ‘A’ 702 did not change during the two weeks they were on vacation. Furthermore, user ‘A’ 702 may have attempted to mask an intended malicious act by letting some period of time elapse between the time they originally downloaded the customer list and when they eventually forwarded it to user ‘B’ 772. From the foregoing, those of skill in the art will recognize that the use of societal time may be advantageous in determining whether a particular entity behavior is of analytic utility. As used herein, mindset factors 622 broadly refer to information used to infer the mental state of a user at a particular point in time, during the occurrence of an event, an enactment of a user behavior, or combination thereof.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to process certain entity attribute information, described in greater detail herein, associated with providing resolution of the identity of an entity at a particular point in time. In various embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to use certain entity identifier information, likewise described in greater detail herein, to ascertain the identity of an associated entity at a particular point in time. In various embodiments, the entity identifier information may include certain temporal information, described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the temporal information may be associated with an event associated with a particular point in time.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to use information associated with certain entity behavior elements to resolve the identity of an entity at a particular point in time. An entity behavior element, as used herein, broadly refers to a discrete element of an entity's behavior during the performance of a particular operation in a physical realm, cyberspace, or a combination thereof. In certain embodiments, such entity behavior elements may be associated with a user/device 730, a user/network 742, a user/resource 748, a user/user 770 interaction, or a combination thereof.

As an example, user ‘A’ 702 may use an endpoint device 304 to browse a particular web page on a news site on an external system 776. In this example, the individual actions performed by user ‘A’ 702 to access the web page are entity behavior elements that constitute an entity behavior, described in greater detail herein. As another example, user ‘A’ 702 may use an endpoint device 304 to download a data file from a particular system 756. In this example, the individual actions performed by user ‘A’ 702 to download the data file, including the use of one or more user authentication factors 606 for user authentication, are entity behavior elements that constitute an entity behavior. In certain embodiments, the user/device 730 interactions may include an interaction between a user, such as user ‘A’ 702 or ‘B’ 772, and an endpoint device 304.

In certain embodiments, the user/device 730 interaction may include interaction with an endpoint device 304 that is not connected to a network at the time the interaction occurs. As an example, user ‘A’ 702 or ‘B’ 772 may interact with an endpoint device 304 that is offline, using applications 732, accessing data 734, or a combination thereof, it may contain. Those user/device 730 interactions, or their result, may be stored on the endpoint device 304 and then be accessed or retrieved at a later time once the endpoint device 304 is connected to the internal 744 or external 746 networks. In certain embodiments, an endpoint agent 306 may be implemented to store the user/device 730 interactions when the user device 304 is offline.

In certain embodiments, an endpoint device 304 may be implemented with a device camera 728. In certain embodiments, the device camera 728 may be integrated into the endpoint device 304. In certain embodiments, the device camera 728 may be implemented as a separate device configured to interoperate with the endpoint device 304. As an example, a webcam familiar to those of skill in the art may be implemented receive and communicate various image and audio signals to an endpoint device 304 via a Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface.

In certain embodiments, the device camera 728 may be implemented to capture and provide user/device 730 interaction information to an endpoint agent 306. In various embodiments, the device camera 728 may be implemented to provide surveillance information related to certain user/device 730 or user/user 770 interactions. In certain embodiments, the surveillance information may be used by the security analytics system 118 to detect entity behavior associated with a user entity, such as user ‘A’ 702 or user ‘B’ 772 that may be of analytic utility.

In certain embodiments, the endpoint device 304 may be used to communicate data through the use of an internal network 744, an external network 746, or a combination thereof. In certain embodiments, the internal 744 and the external 746 networks may include a public network, such as the Internet, a physical private network, a virtual private network (VPN), or any combination thereof. In certain embodiments, the internal 744 and external 746 networks may likewise include a wireless network, including a personal area network (PAN), based on technologies such as Bluetooth. In various embodiments, the wireless network may include a wireless local area network (WLAN), based on variations of the IEEE 802.11 specification, commonly referred to as WiFi. In certain embodiments, the wireless network may include a wireless wide area network (WWAN) based on an industry standard including various 3G, 4G and 5G technologies.

In certain embodiments, the user/user 770 interactions may include interactions between two or more user entities, such as user ‘A’ 702 and ‘B’ 772. In certain embodiments, the user/user interactions 770 may be physical, such as a face-to-face meeting, via a user/device 730 interaction, a user/network 742 interaction, a user/resource 748 interaction, or some combination thereof. In certain embodiments, the user/user 770 interaction may include a face-to-face verbal exchange. In certain embodiments, the user/user 770 interaction may include a written exchange, such as text written on a sheet of paper. In certain embodiments, the user/user 770 interaction may include a face-to-face exchange of gestures, such as a sign language exchange.

In certain embodiments, temporal event information associated with various user/device 730, user/network 742, user/resource 748, or user/user 770 interactions may be collected and used to provide real-time resolution of the identity of an entity at a particular point in time. Those of skill in the art will recognize that many such examples of user/device 730, user/network 742, user/resource 748, and user/user 770 interactions are possible. Accordingly, the foregoing is not intended to limit the spirit, scope or intent of the invention.

In various embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to process certain contextual information in the performance of certain security analytic operations. As used herein, contextual information broadly refers to any information, directly or indirectly, individually or in combination, related to a particular entity behavior. In certain embodiments, entity behavior may include a user entity's physical behavior, cyber behavior, or a combination thereof. As likewise used herein, a user entity's physical behavior broadly refers to any user behavior occurring within a physical realm, such as speaking, gesturing, facial patterns or expressions, walking, and so forth. More particularly, such physical behavior may include any action enacted by an entity user that can be objectively observed, or indirectly inferred, within a physical realm. In certain embodiments, the objective observation, or indirect inference, of the physical behavior may be performed electronically.

As an example, a user may attempt to use an electronic access card to enter a secured building at a certain time. In this example, the use of the access card to enter the building is the action and the reading of the access card makes the user's physical behavior electronically-observable. As another example, a first user may physically transfer a document to a second user, which is captured by a video surveillance system. In this example, the physical transferal of the document from the first user to the second user is the action. Likewise, the video record of the transferal makes the first and second user's physical behavior electronically-observable. As used herein, electronically-observable user behavior broadly refers to any behavior exhibited or enacted by a user entity that can be observed through the use of an electronic device (e.g., an electronic sensor), a computing device or system (e.g., an endpoint 304 or edge 202 device, a physical security device 754, a system 756, a shared device 758, etc.), computer instructions (e.g., a software application), or a combination thereof.

Cyber behavior, as used herein, broadly refers to any behavior occurring in cyberspace, whether enacted by an individual user, a group of users, or a system acting at the behest of an individual user, a group of users, or other entity. More particularly, cyber behavior may include physical, social, or mental actions that can be objectively observed, or indirectly inferred, within cyberspace. As an example, a user may use an endpoint device 304 to access and browse a particular website on the Internet. In this example, the individual actions performed by the user to access and browse the website constitute a cyber behavior. As another example, a user may use an endpoint device 304 to download a data file from a particular system 756 at a particular point in time. In this example, the individual actions performed by the user to download the data file, and associated temporal information, such as a time-stamp associated with the download, constitute a cyber behavior. In these examples, the actions are enacted within cyberspace, in combination with associated temporal information, which makes them electronically-observable.

In certain embodiments, the contextual information may include location data 736. In certain embodiments, the endpoint device 304 may be configured to receive such location data 736, which is used as a data source for determining the user's location 618. In certain embodiments, the location data 736 may include Global Positioning System (GPS) data provided by a GPS satellite 738. In certain embodiments, the location data 736 may include location data 736 provided by a wireless network, such as from a cellular network tower 740. In certain embodiments (not shown), the location data 736 may include various Internet Protocol (IP) or other network address information assigned to the endpoint 304 or edge 202 device. In certain embodiments (also not shown), the location data 736 may include recognizable structures or physical addresses within a digital image or video recording.

In certain embodiments, the endpoint devices 304 may include an input device (not shown), such as a keypad, magnetic card reader, token interface, biometric sensor, and so forth. In certain embodiments, such endpoint devices 304 may be directly, or indirectly, connected to a particular facility 752, physical security device 754, system 756, or shared device 758. As an example, the endpoint device 304 may be directly connected to an ingress/egress system, such as an electronic lock on a door or an access gate of a parking garage. As another example, the endpoint device 304 may be indirectly connected to a physical security device 754 through a dedicated security network.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to perform various risk-adaptive protection operations. Risk-adaptive, as used herein, broadly refers to adaptively responding to risks associated with an electronically-observable entity behavior. In various embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to perform certain risk-adaptive protection operations by monitoring certain entity behaviors, assess the corresponding risk they may represent, individually or in combination, and respond with an associated response. In certain embodiments, such responses may be based upon contextual information, described in greater detail herein, associated with a given entity behavior.

In certain embodiments, various information associated with a user entity profile 602, likewise described in greater detail herein, may be used to perform the risk-adaptive protection operations. In certain embodiments, the user entity profile 602 may include user profile attributes 604, user behavior factors 610, user mindset factors 622, or a combination thereof. In these embodiments, the information associated with a user entity profile 602 used to perform the risk-adaptive protection operations is a matter of design choice.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented as a stand-alone system. In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented as a distributed system. In certain embodiment, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented as a virtual system, such as an instantiation of one or more virtual machines (VMs). In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented as a security analytics service 764. In certain embodiments, the security analytics service 764 may be implemented in a cloud environment familiar to those of skill in the art. In various embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may use data stored in a repository of security analytics data 680, entity behavior catalog data 690, entity identifier data 670, and event data 672, or a combination thereof, in the performance of certain security analytics operations, described in greater detail herein. Those of skill in the art will recognize that many such embodiments are possible. Accordingly, the foregoing is not intended to limit the spirit, scope or intent of the invention.

FIG. 8 is a simplified process flow diagram showing the performance of event type association operations performed in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In various embodiments, event type association operations may be initiated by individual events in an event stream 802 being received and processed to identify their associated features 804 by parsing their associated event data, described in greater detail herein. As used herein, a feature, as it relates to an event, broadly refers to a property, characteristic or attribute of a particular event.

As an example, features associated with a corpus of thousands of text-oriented messages (e.g., SMS, email, social network messages, etc.) may be generated by removing low-value words (i.e., stopwords), using certain size blocks of words (i.e., n-grams), or applying various text processing rules. Examples of features associated with an event may include the number of bytes uploaded, the time of day, the presence of certain terms in unstructured content, the respective domains associated with senders and recipients of information, and the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) classification of certain web page visits. Examples of other features associated with an event may include data associated with various entity behavior factors, described in greater detail herein.

Once an event's associated features 804 have been identified, a determination is made whether the identified features match 806 an existing event type, described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, sets of features corresponding to existing event types may be stored in a repository of event data 672. In various embodiments, the determination of whether features associated with a particular event match 806 a set of features associated with an existing event type may be accomplished through the performance of certain data element comparison operations familiar to those of skill in the art.

If it is determined that the features associated with a particular event match 806 an existing event type, then the matching event type 816 is assigned to the event. Otherwise a determination is made whether to use the features associated with the event to create 808 a new event type. If so, then a new event type 810 is created. In certain embodiments, a set of features associated with the newly-created event type may be stored in the repository of even data 672. The resulting new event type 812 is then assigned to the event.

However, if it is determined to not create 808 a new event type from the features associated with the event, then an “unknown” event type 814 is assigned to the event. In certain embodiments, the assignment of a new, “unknown,” or matching event type to the event may result in the generation of a classified event 818. In certain embodiments, the event type associated with a particular classified event 818 may be implemented as a feature of the event. In these embodiments, the method by which the event type is implemented as a feature of a classified event is a matter of design choice.

FIG. 9 is a generalized process flow diagram of the performance of event preprocessing operations implemented in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In certain embodiments, event preprocessing operations 900 may be initiated by individual classified events in a classified event stream 818 being received and processed by various event enrichment modules, to generate enriched events 910. In certain embodiments, these modules may include an event validator 904 module, an event deduplication 906 module, and a content isolation 908 module, or a combination thereof. As used herein, event enrichment broadly refers to performing certain data enrichment operations and processes associated with enriching data associated with a particular classified event in the classified event stream 818. As likewise used herein, data enrichment broadly refers to various operations and processes typically used to enhance, refine or otherwise improve raw data.

Examples of geographic data enrichment may include the use of postal code, county name, longitude and latitude, and political district data, while examples of behavioral data enrichment may include purchase, credit risk, and preferred communication channel data. Likewise, examples of demographic data enrichment may include the use of income, marital status, and education data, while examples of psychographic data enrichment may include interests and political affiliation data.

In certain embodiments, event enrichment may include matching certain incoming events in the classified event stream 818 with existing event data. In certain embodiments, event enrichment may include deleting certain data associated with certain incoming classified events in the classified event stream 818. For example, certain data associated with various incoming classified events may be determined to be irrelevant to analyzing the probability distributions of certain interrelated event features. In certain embodiments, the method by which data associated with various incoming classified events is determined to be irrelevant is a matter of design choice.

In certain embodiments, event enrichment may include correcting invalid data associated with certain incoming events in the event stream 802. In certain embodiments, event enrichment may include interpolating data associated with certain incoming events in the event stream 802 existing event data. In certain embodiments, the existing event data may be stored in a repository of persistent event data.

For example, a classified event in the classified event stream 818 may be associated with a first user attaching a binary file to an email addressed to a second user. In this example, the event enrichment operations 900 may include determining the file type of the attachment. Likewise, the event preprocessing operations 900 may include determining the size of the attachment, the date and time of the email, the address of the originating email server, the email addresses of the first and second user, and so forth. In certain embodiments, the event preprocessing operations 900 may include associating annotations or other metadata corresponding to such determinations with the event.

In certain embodiments, the event enrichment modules may include an event validator module 904. In certain embodiments, the event validator 904 module may be implemented to perform data validation operations on data associated with a particular event. As used herein, data validation broadly refers to various operations and processes associated with data cleansing to ensure data quality. As likewise used herein, data cleansing broadly refers to the process of detecting, correcting, and possible removing, corrupted or inaccurate elements from a data set. In certain embodiments, data cleansing operations may include identifying incomplete, incorrect, inaccurate, or irrelevant data elements and then replacing, modifying or deleting certain data elements that fail to meet certain data use parameters.

In certain embodiments, the event validator 904 module may be implemented to perform data validation operations without the use of statistical data. In certain embodiments, the event validator 904 module may be implemented to validate event timestamps falling within a particular interval of time. In certain embodiments, the interval of time may be user-defined or otherwise configurable. In these embodiments, the definition of the interval of time is a matter of design choice. In certain embodiments, the event validator 904 module may be implemented such that an alias for an entity does not exceed a certain number of characters. In these embodiments, the number of characters is a matter of design choice. In certain embodiments, the event validator 904 module may be implemented that any attested metadata has an expected, corresponding type. In these embodiments, the expected type of metadata is a matter of design choice.

In certain embodiments, the resulting validated event data may be consistent with similar data sets used by a security analytics system to analyze the probability distribution of features associated with certain interrelated events. Certain embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation that the intent of such data validation is to ensure fitness, accuracy and consistency of data associated with a particular event.

In certain embodiments, the event deduplication 906 module may be implemented to perform operations associated with deduplication, entity resolution, attachment enrichment, domain enrichment, or some combination thereof. As used herein, deduplication operations broadly refer to operations for determining a unique identity for an event based upon certain identifying fields. In certain embodiments, the event deduplication module may be implemented to perform type-dependent deduplication operations.

As used herein, type-dependent event deduplication operations broadly refer to deduplication operations that are performed to determine a unique identity for an event according to its type. As likewise used herein, an event type broadly refers to a particular class of events. In various embodiments, the type of an event may be determined by the presence of certain features that have been previously associated with a particular event type. In these embodiments, the method by which a particular feature is determined to be associated with a particular event type, and the method by which it is determined to be present within an event's data or metadata, is a matter of design choice.

Examples of such event types include the generation, transmission, or receipt of an email, text, or chat message by an entity. Other examples of event types include operating system (OS), firewall, edge device, and web transaction events. Yet other examples of event types include various behaviors enacted by an entity, as described in greater detail herein. Skilled practitioners of the art will recognize that many such event types are possible. Accordingly, the foregoing is not intended to limit the spirit, scope, or intent of the invention.

In certain embodiments, an event's associated features may include one or more identifying fields. In certain embodiments, a particular event type may be recognized by the presence of such identifying fields. In certain embodiments, the identifying fields may include an externally-generated concept, idea, or notion provided by the data source from which the event originated. In various embodiments, the identifying fields may include certain fields deemed to be fundamental to the identity of an event, or identification thereof. In certain embodiments, the value of an identifying field may be taken as imprecise with configurable granularity. For example, events that appear to be similar, and have timestamps within one minute of one another, may be considered duplicates. Conversely, two events may appear to be similar, yet have corresponding timestamps that are several minutes apart, and as a result, not be considered to be duplicates.

As likewise used herein, entity resolution operations broadly refer to operations for resolving certain raw identifiers in input data to known entities. Likewise, as used herein, attachment enrichment operations broadly refer to operations for adding metadata based upon the quantity or type of data associated with an event. In certain embodiments, the metadata may be determined by extension, mime type headers, or mime type, as inferred from content associated with an event. In certain embodiments, the metadata may be internal or external to an organization, a particular business unit, government agency, and so forth. Domain enrichment operations, as likewise used herein, broadly refers to operations for adding metadata based upon a particular realm of Internet administrative autonomy, authority, or control associated with an event.

In certain embodiments, the content isolation 908 module may be implemented to recognize and isolate certain types of recurring content. Examples of such recurring content may include standardized text, such as disclaimers or various types of boilerplate. Other examples of recurring content may include graphical images such as logos, icons, user avatars, and so forth.

In certain embodiments, the event preprocessing operations 900 may include the processing of Domain Specific Language queries 912. As used herein, a Domain Specific Language (DSL) broadly refers to a computer language specialized to a particular application domain. Examples of DSLs include Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) for web pages. Mathematica® for symbolic mathematics, Structured Query Language (SQL) for relational database queries, and Query DSL (QDSL) for Elasticsearch queries.

In certain embodiments, a DSL query processing 914 module may be implemented to process various DSL queries 912. In certain embodiments, the DSL query 912 may reference data, metadata, or a combination thereof, related to an event. In certain embodiments, the DSL query 912 may be expressed in a DSL specific to the domain of events involving the data, metadata, or a combination thereof, related to such events. In certain embodiments, the DSL query processing 914 module may be implemented to receive enriched events 910 resulting from performance of the event enrichment operations described in greater detail herein.

In certain embodiments, the DSL query processing 914 module may be implemented to determine whether or not a particular document matches a set of DSL queries 912. As used herein, a document broadly refers to a body of content. In certain embodiments, such content may include text, unstructured data, structured data, graphical images, photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, biometric information, metadata, and so forth.

In certain embodiments, the DSL query processing 914 module may be implemented to provide a streaming query framework. In various embodiments, the streaming query framework may be implemented to extract certain event features in real-time, in batch mode, or on-demand. In certain embodiments, such event features may be associated with anomalous, abnormal, unexpected or malicious user behavior, as described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the occurrence of an unlikely event feature or features associated with a particular entity may result in the generation of a corresponding risk score. In certain embodiments, the generation of a corresponding risk score may include computing the aggregation of occurrences of certain unlikely features with which an entity may be associated. In certain embodiments, the resulting risk score may be assigned, or otherwise associated, with the entity associated with the occurrence of an unlikely feature. In certain embodiments, the assigned risk score may be implemented to reflect a security risk corresponding to the entity associated with the occurrence of the unlikely feature. In certain embodiments, multiple occurrences of an unlikely feature within a particular period of time may increase an assigned risk score.

In certain embodiments, the DSL query processing 914 module may be implemented to receive certain DSL queries 912 that include terms, features, tags, or other items of interest that may be associated with certain interrelated events. As used herein, a term broadly refers to a word, compound word, phrase expression, numeric value, or alphanumeric string, which in certain contexts is associated with a particular meaning. As used herein, a phrase broadly refers to a sequence of terms, or multi-words, familiar to skilled practitioners of the art. In certain embodiments, a term may be associated with an event, a feature of an event, a classification label, a metadata tag label, or a combination thereof.

In certain embodiments, the DSL query processing 914 module may be implemented to determine the commonalities between such DSL queries 912. In certain embodiments, the DSL query processing 914 module may be implemented only evaluate the features or other terms of interest needed for the evaluation of a particular event. In certain embodiments, the DSL query processing 914 module may be implemented to only evaluate the features or other terms of interest once when processing multiple DSL queries 912.

In certain embodiments, the DSL queries 912 may only be processed when the DSL query processing 914 module is first initialized. In certain embodiments the DSL queries 912 may be reprocessed periodically by the DSL query processing 914 module during event collection if they have been added to or otherwise changed. In certain embodiments, such reprocessing may be performed by periodically polling for configuration changes and reinitializing the DSL query processing 914 module as needed. Certain embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation that such reinitializing of the DSL query processing 914 module facilitates the reduction of a DSL query 912, which involves executing preliminary query steps against reference data (not shown).

As an example, a DSL query 912 may be for events associated with employees whose salary is greater than some amount. In this example, the first step is to identify who those employees may be, and once they are identified, include them into the query when it is “reduced.” It will be appreciated that the use of cached results in place of taking this step may result in missing an employee who recently received a raise, and as a result, belongs in the group of identified employees. It will likewise be appreciated that inclusion in the group of identified employees would typically not occur until the DSL query processing 914 module was reinitialized. In certain embodiments, the DSL query processing 914 module may be implemented to periodically recompile and re-reduce certain DSL queries 912. In these embodiments, the method by which the decision is made to periodically recompile and re-reduce DSL queries 912 is a matter of design choice.

In certain embodiments, the receipt of a DSL query 912 may result in certain apply labels initialization 916 operations being performed to initialize an apply labels 918 module. In certain embodiments, the apply labels 918 module may be implemented to classify events received from the DSL query processing 914 module by labeling them with associated classification labels to generate configured events 920. In certain embodiments, the labels applied by the apply labels 918 module may include associated metadata tags. In these embodiments, the method by which the apply labels 918 module selects a classification or metadata tag label, and the associated nomenclature thereof, is a matter of design choice.

As an example, an event may include a user downloading a file from a particular server address. In this example, the event may be classified as a “file download” with corresponding metadata of “server address.” Accordingly, the apply labels 918 module may apply both a “file download” classification label and a “server address” metadata tag label to the event. As another example, an event may include an employee using a badge to enter a secured facility after normal work hours. In this example, the event may be classified as “facility access,” with corresponding metadata of “secure” and “after hours.” Accordingly, the apply labels 918 module may apply a “facility access” classification label as well as “secure” and “after hours” metadata tag labels to the event.

In certain embodiments, the labels applied by the apply labels 918 module may be user-generated, user-edited, or a combination thereof. In various embodiments, certain labels applied by the apply labels 918 module may be applied automatically, corresponding to certain sets of conditions. In certain embodiments, the labels applied by the apply labels 918 module may be automatically or manually removed from certain interrelated events, based on inspection. In certain embodiments, the labels applied by the apply labels 918 module to one event may automatically or manually be added to another event. In certain embodiments, such addition of labels may be based upon a query to provide bulk labeling of certain interrelated events that may share common features or other characteristics. In various embodiments, such addition of labels may be implemented to flag certain interrelated events as part of a review workflow. In certain embodiments, the apply labels operations performed by the apply labels 918 module may result in configured features.

In certain embodiments, the receipt of a DSL query 912 may result in certain features initialization 922 operations being performed to initialize a feature matching 924 module. In certain embodiments, configured events 920 generated by the apply labels 918 module may be processed by the feature matching 924 module to generate matched features. In certain embodiments, the feature matching 924 module may be implemented to perform certain feature extraction operations on the configured features 920 generated by the apply labels 918 module.

As likewise used herein, feature extraction broadly refers to the selection of a subset of features associated with an event. In certain embodiments, the feature extraction operations performed by the feature matching 924 module may result in the generation of extracted event features 926, described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the feature matching 924 module may be implemented to perform transformation operations on a group of features associated with an event to generate a smaller set of derived features. In certain embodiments, the determination of whether or not feature matching operations are performed may be dependent upon on the type of the feature. In certain embodiments, the type of the feature may be determined by an associated feature definition. In these embodiments, the method by which a feature definition is defined, determined, or associated with a corresponding feature is a matter of design choice.

FIG. 10 is a generalized process flow diagram showing the performance of type-dependent event deduplication operations implemented in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In certain embodiments, the event deduplication module 906 shown in FIG. 9 may be implemented to perform type-dependent event deduplication operations, described in greater detail herein. As likewise described in greater detail herein, the type classification of an event may be determined by the presence of certain identifying fields. In certain embodiments, the data contained in such identifying fields may be used to determine the equivalence of two events of the same type.

As an example, an email message event may have identifying fields that include the sender, the recipient, a subject line, one or more timestamps, unstructured content segments and hyperlinks within the message body, binary file attachments, and so forth. In this example, the sender and recipient of two email messages may be the same, as are their attachments, yet the contents of their respective message bodies may be different. Accordingly, they may be determined to not be duplicates of one another.

Certain embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation that the same event may enter an event analysis and processing system different ways, and as a result, be duplicates. Furthermore, the duplicate events may have had different intermediate processing along the way. As a result, various identifying fields for certain types of events may have been modified as a result. For example, an event analysis and processing system may receive a duplicate email message from two different sources. In this example, the two email messages may be identical with the exception of their respective timestamps, which as a result of modification along the way are close, but not identical.

As another example, a web proxy may access a particular website and load a landing page, which results in data being fetched from multiple locations. In this example, depending upon how the proxy is implemented, its associated proxy log may have timestamps indicating the user visited the website 100 different times within the span of a few milliseconds at a particular point in time. As a result, it may be preferable from a resolution standpoint to reduce the granularity of the timestamps to indicate the user simply visited the website within a less granular interval of time, such as 100 milliseconds, instead of 10 milliseconds.

As yet another example, a web proxy log may have identifying fields that include Domain Name System (DNS) records, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) that were accessed, and so on. In this example, two web proxy log events may be determined to be equivalent, or duplicates, if their respective DNS records, IP addresses, and associated URLs were identical. However, two web proxy logs may likewise be determined to be equivalent if their respective DNS records and IP addresses were identical, despite the fact their associated URLs may not be exactly identical. For example, a primary URL for a particular web page may have embedded secondary URLs for other pages or content sources that change dynamically. As a result, the primary URLs for the two web proxy log events may be identical, yet one or more secondary URLs may be different, with the timestamps of the two events occurring within the same time interval, such as 100 milliseconds.

Accordingly, various embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation that the use of certain criteria, such as slightly different timestamps, to determine distinguishing equivalence of two events may be appropriate for some event types, but not others. Furthermore, certain embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation that lack of acuteness in selecting such criteria may cause unexpected deduplication results. In these embodiments, the determination of which identifying fields are used as criteria to determine distinguishing equivalence for a particular event type is a matter of design choice.

Referring now to FIG. 10, the event deduplication module 906 shown in FIG. 9 may be implemented in various embodiments to receive a stream of validated events 1002 from an event validator module 904, likewise shown in FIG. 9. In certain of these embodiments, individual events in the stream of validated events 1002 may be processed by the event deduplication module 906 to first determine 1004 their event type, as described in greater detail herein. Once an individual event's type has been determined, its associated event data is parsed 1006 into event data segments. In certain embodiments, parsing operations familiar to those of skill in the art may be performed to parse event data associated with a particular event according to its corresponding event type. In certain embodiments, the event data segments may correspond to identifying fields, described in greater detail herein, associated with the event's type. As an example, an email message may be parsed into event data segments corresponding to its sender, its recipient(s), its subject line, its message body, or subsets thereof, such as embedded URLs, binary attachments, and so forth.

In various embodiments, once the event data has been parsed 1006 according to its associated event type, pertinent event data segments are extracted 1008 and then concatenated 1010. In certain embodiments, the pertinent event data segments may correspond to a feature of the event, in part or in whole. In various embodiments, the concatenated 1010 event data segments may then be processed to compute an event data hash value 1012. In certain embodiments, one or more subsets of the concatenated 1010 event data segments may be processed to generate corresponding event data hash values 1012. In certain embodiments, the event data hash value(s) may be implemented as globally unique identifiers (GUIDS). In these embodiments, the determination of which event data segments are determined to be pertinent, the method by which they are extracted and concatenated, the hash value is computed, and a GUID is implemented, is a matter of design choice.

In certain embodiments, one or more event data segments, or a subset thereof, may be implemented, individually or in combination, instead of computing a hash value. As an example, an external system, such as an email server or message transfer agent (MTA), may submit their own unique record identifier or locater with each event. Accordingly, certain embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation that it may be advantageous to use such unique identifiers, individually or in combination with computed hash values of event data segments, in the performance of type-dependent deduplication processes.

A determination 1014 is then made whether the computed hash value of the concatenated event data segments is currently present in a repository of event data hash values 1016. If it is, then the event is designated as a duplicate 1018, as the presence of its corresponding hash value in the repository of event data hash values indicates a matching hash value has previously been computed for its associated event data segments. Otherwise, the computed hash value is added to the repository of event data hash values 1016 for future comparison operations, and the event is designated as a deduplicated event 1020. In certain embodiments, the resulting deduplicated event 1020 may then be provided to a content isolation module 908 for additional processing, as described in greater detail herein.

FIG. 11 shows a simplified block diagram of the performance of eventually consistent entity resolution operations performed in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. Skilled practitioners of the art will be familiar with the concept of eventual consistency, which is commonly used in distributed computing to achieve high availability while informally guaranteeing if no new updates are made to a particular data item, eventually all accesses to that item will return the last updated value. Eventual consistency approaches assist in a distributed system eventually maintaining a consistent view of all data the distributed system may maintain, even though the data may temporarily have some inconsistencies. Accordingly, as used herein, eventually consistent entity resolution broadly refers to returning the last updated resolution of a particular entity's identity if no new updates are made to the entity's associated resolution information.

Redundant data may be minimized in traditional normalized databases by storing the data in separate logical tables. In such approaches, a goal is to have only one copy of each piece of data in the database. For example, a normalized database may have a courses table and a teachers table. In this example, each entry in the courses table may include the teachers's ID (e.g., teacherID) for a particular course, but not the teacher's name (e.g., teacherName). Likewise, each entry in the teachers table may include the teacher's name and their corresponding teacher ID. To continue the example, a JOIN operation may be performed between the two tables when a list of all courses with the teacher's name is desired.

Skilled practitioners of the art will recognize that such an approach is often advantageous, as the teacher's name only has to be updated in one place if they happen to change their name. However, one drawback to such JOIN operations is they may take longer than desired when the tables accessed during a JOIN operation are large. Accordingly, various denormalization approaches may be implemented in certain embodiments to achieve greater throughput or efficiency in the performance of security analytics and entity resolution operations by performing fewer JOIN operations.

Those of skill in the art will likewise be familiar with denormalization, which is a strategy used on a previously-normalized database to improve the read performance of a database, at the expense of losing some write performance, by adding redundant copies of data or by grouping data. A motivation for implementing denormalization is to improve performance or scalability in relational database systems that perform large numbers of read operations. Certain embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation that databases, and their associated tables, must typically be normalized, as described in greater detail herein, to efficiently denormalize them.

Referring now to FIG. 11, a stream of security-related events 1102 is received and then parsed to identify associated entity identifier information, which in turn is stored in a repository of entity identifier data 670. Any changes 1104 associated with the identity of an entity are identified, resolved, and mapped 1106 to the corresponding entity. In various embodiments, identification, resolution, and mapping 1106 operations may be performed to resolve raw entity identifiers (e.g., email addresses, phone numbers, etc.) associated with a particular security-related event 1102 to the identity of one or more entities. In certain embodiments, the identification, resolution, and mapping 1106 operations may be implemented to resolve the identity of an entity to a human-readable form 1112.

In various embodiments, denormalization operations may be performed on certain resolved entity identifiers such that they are associated with a corresponding event. Certain embodiments of the invention reflect an appreciation that the performance of such denormalization operations may enable faster searching, aggregation, and correlation of events across disparate sources of data. Eventually consistent resolution 1108 operations are then performed to update 810 affected documents, described in greater detail herein, which will then reflect the most recent changes to data used to resolve the entity's identity. The updated 1110 documents are then stored in a repository of event data 672, which in turn may be used in the performance of security analytics and entity resolution operations, likewise described in greater detail herein.

FIG. 12 shows a simplified block diagram of entity identifier update operations performed in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In various embodiments, as described in greater detail herein, streaming entity resolution 1204 operations may be performed on an event stream 802 to resolve, or otherwise associate, one or more events to the identity of a particular entity. In certain of these embodiments, the streaming entity resolution 1204 operations may include various resolution mapping operations 1106 described in the descriptive text associated with FIG. 11. In certain embodiments, the results of the streaming entity resolution 1204 may be stored in a repository of event data 672.

In various embodiments, entity identifier normalization and association operations 1206, likewise described in greater detail herein, may be performed on a stream of entity identifier data 1202. In certain embodiments, the stream of entity identifier data 1202 may include information, such as entity attributes (e.g., an IP address), associated with a particular entity. In certain of these embodiments, the results of the entity identifier normalization and association operations 1206 may be stored in a repository of entity identifier 670 data.

In various embodiments, a write-ahead log (WAL) 1208, familiar to those of skill in the art, may be implemented to identify updates, or other transactional data, stored in the repository of entity identifier 670 data that may be used to associate, or re-associate, entity identifiers and other related information with different entities. In certain of these embodiments, replication 1210 operations may be performed to replicate the repository of entity identifier data 670, or the WAL 1208, or both, for use by another system or process. As an example, the repository of entity identifier data 670, or the WAL 1208, or both, may be replicated for use as a text search facility familiar to skilled practitioners of the art. In these embodiments, the method by which certain data stored in the repository of entity identifier data 670, or the WAL 1208, or both, is selected for replication, or the method by which it is replicated, is a matter of design choice.

In various embodiments, a changed entity identifier filter 1212 may be implemented to identify certain updates that re-associate a particular entity identifier, or other related information, with a corresponding entity to determine changed entity identifiers 1214. As an example, a particular entity may have first entity identifier, such as a user name. In this example, the entity may have a second entity identifier, such as an IP address, which as a result of various entity resolution operations described in greater detail herein, may then be resolved to the entity. As another example, an entity may have a first entity identifier, such as a first email address, that may be replaced by a second entity identifier, such as a second email address. In this example, the second email address may then likewise be resolved to the entity.

In certain embodiments, the changed entity identifiers 1214 may then be processed by an eventually consistent entity resolution 1108 process, described in greater detail herein, to resolve the identity of a particular entity.

In various embodiments, certain entity data stored in the repository of event data 672 may be used to perform the eventually consistent entity resolution 1108 process. In various embodiments, a micro-batch query (e.g., ˜1,000 queries) may be implemented to retrieve certain entity data stored in the repository of event data 672 for use by the entity resolution 1108 process. In various embodiments, the results of the eventually consistent resolution 1108 process may subsequently be stored in the repository of event data 672. In certain of these embodiments, a micro-batch update (e.g., ˜1,000 updates) may be implemented to store the results of the eventually consistent resolution 1108 process.

FIG. 13 is a simplified block diagram of an entity resolution system implemented in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In certain embodiments, a security analytics system 118 may be implemented to process certain entity information corresponding to an event to resolve the identity of an associated entity. As used herein, entity information broadly refers to information that can be used to ascertain or corroborate the identity of an entity and its associated behavior, whether the behavior occurs within a physical realm or cyberspace. In certain embodiments, entity information may include user profile attributes, user behavior factors, or user mindset factors, described in greater detail herein. In various embodiments, entity information may include certain types of content. In these embodiments, such content may include text, unstructured data, structured data, graphical images, photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, biometric information, and so forth. In certain embodiments, the entity information may include metadata. In certain embodiments, the metadata may include entity attributes, which in turn may include certain entity identifier types or classifications.

In various embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to use certain entity identifier information to ascertain the identity of an associated entity at a particular point in time. As used herein, entity identifier information broadly refers to an information element associated with an entity that can be used to ascertain or corroborate the identity of its corresponding entity at a particular point in time. In certain embodiments, the entity identifier information may include user authentication factors, user profile attributes, user behavior factors, user mindset factors, information associated with various endpoint and edge devices, networks, resources, or a combination thereof.

In certain embodiments, the entity identifier information may include temporal information. As used herein, temporal information broadly refers to a particular point in time (e.g., a date, timestamp, etc.), a measure of time (e.g., a minute, hour, day, etc.), or an interval of time (e.g., between Jun. 3, 2017 and Mar. 4, 2018, etc.). In certain embodiments, the temporal information may be associated with an event associated with a particular point in time, a measure of time, an interval of time, or a combination thereof. As used herein, such a temporal event broadly refers to an occurrence, action or activity enacted by, or associated with, an entity at a particular point in time, for a measure of time, during an interval of time, or a combination thereof.

Examples of such temporal events include making a phone call, sending a text or an email, using a device, such as an endpoint device, accessing a system, and entering a physical facility. Other examples of temporal events include uploading, transferring, downloading, modifying, or deleting data, such as data stored in a datastore, or accessing a service. Yet other examples of temporal events include interactions between two or more users, interactions between a user and a device, interactions between a user and a network, and interactions between a user and a resource, whether physical or otherwise. Yet still other examples of temporal events include a change in name, address, physical location, occupation, position, role, marital status, gender, association, affiliation, or assignment.

As likewise used herein, temporal event information broadly refers to temporal information associated with a particular event. In various embodiments, the temporal event information may include certain types of content. In certain embodiments, such types of content may include text, unstructured data, structured data, graphical images, photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, and so forth. In certain embodiments, the entity information may include metadata. In various embodiments, the metadata may include temporal event attributes, which in turn may include certain entity identifier types or classifications, described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the temporal event information may be used to resolve the identity of an entity at a particular point in time, for a measure of time, during an interval of time, or a combination thereof.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to use information associated with such temporal resolution of an entity's identity to assess the risk associated with a particular entity, for a measure of time, during an interval of time, or a combination thereof, and respond with an associated response. In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to respond to such assessments in order to reduce operational overhead and improve system efficiency while maintaining security integrity. In certain embodiments, the response to such assessments may be performed by a security administrator. Accordingly, certain embodiments of the invention may be directed towards assessing the risk associated with the affirmative resolution of the identity of an entity at a particular point in time, for a measure of time, during an interval of time, or a combination thereof, in combination with its associated contextual information. Consequently, the security analytics system 118 may be more oriented in various embodiments to risk mitigation than to security administration.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to resolve the identity of an entity by performing various entity resolution operations. As used herein, entity resolution broadly refers to resolving certain raw identifiers in input data to a particular entity. In certain embodiments, the entity resolution operations may include parsing, classifying and normalizing entity identifier information to generate entity identifier elements, which in turn are matched, or resolved, to a particular entity.

In certain embodiments, the performance of various entity resolution operations may result in new entity identifier elements being resolved to an existing, or previously-identified entity. In certain embodiments, the performance of various entity resolution operations may result in the creation of a previously-unknown or previously-unidentified entity. In these embodiments, the new entity identifier elements may be resolved to the newly-created entity. In certain embodiments, the entity identifier elements, and resolution data related to their association with a particular resolved entity 1340, may be stored in a repository of entity identifier data 670.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to perform entity resolution operations to resolve the identity of a particular entity. As used herein, entity resolution broadly refers to resolving the identity of an entity prior to the performance of the next step of a particular process corresponding to an event associated with the entity. In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to include an event preprocessing system 122 and an entity resolution system 124. In certain embodiments, the event preprocessing system 122 may be implemented to perform the event preprocessing operations 900 described in the descriptive text associated with FIG. 9. In certain embodiments, the event preprocessing system 122 may be implemented to generate extracted event features 926 from an event stream 802, as described in greater detail in the descriptive text associated with FIG. 8.

In certain embodiments, the entity resolution system 124 may be implemented to include an entity identifier information parsing 1304 module, an entity identifier element type classification 1306 module, an entity identifier element normalization 1308 module, an entity identifier element association 1310 module, an entity type reference engine 1312, and an eventually consistent entity resolution 1314 module, or some combination thereof. In certain embodiments, the entity identifier information parsing 1304 module may be implemented to process extracted event features generated by the event preprocessing system 122 to generate entity identifier elements.

As an example, the event stream 802 may contain text stating, “John Smith was the VP of Sales for NewCo from May 9, 2016 through Jun. 15, 2017, at which time Bob Jones assumed the position, which he held until Nov. 20, 2017.” In this example, the resulting extracted event features may include “John Smith,” “Bob Jones,” “VP of Sales,” “NewCo,” “May 9, 2016,” “Jun. 15, 2017,” and “Nov. 20, 2017.” To continue the example, the resulting entity identifier elements generated by the entity identifier information parsing 704 module may include “John Smith,” “Bob Jones,” “VP of Sales,” and “NewCo.” To further continue the example, the extracted event features of “May 9, 2016,” “Jun. 15, 2017,” and “Nov. 20, 2017” may be used as temporal identity resolution factors, described in greater detail herein, to assist in the performance of entity resolution operations.

As another example, the event stream 802 may include a data record associated with a package delivery, which in turn may include a delimited string of data such as, “Rob Adams, NewCo, 30.648748, −97.687856, John Smith, 02.17.2018, 2:03.” In this example, the resulting extracted event features may include “Rob Adams,” “NewCo,” “30.648748,” “−97.687856,” “John Smith,” “02.17.2017,” and “2:03.” To continue the example, the resulting entity identifier elements generated by the entity identifier information parsing 704 module may include “Rob Adams,” “NewCo,” and “John Smith.” To further continue the example, the extracted event features of “30.648748” and “−97.687856” may be used as location data and the extracted event features “02.17.2017” and “2:03” may be used as temporal identity resolution factors, all of which may be used to assist in the performance of entity resolution operations.

As yet another example, the event stream 802 may include an email address, such as “John Smith john.smith@newco.com”. In this example, the resulting extracted event features may include “John Smith,” “john.smith,” and “newco.com,” all of which may be used as entity identifier elements. As yet still another example, the event stream 602 may include a timestamped log of a file downloaded from a particular datastore, such as “j smith, abc123!, salesleads.xls, 2017.04.04, 16:33:24:45.” In this example, the resulting extracted event features may include “jsmith,” and “abc123!,” “salesleads.xls,” “2017.04.04,” and “16:33:24:45.” To continue the example, the extracted event features of “j smith,” and “abc123!” may be used as entity identifier elements. Likewise, the extracted event feature of “salesleads.xls” may be used as contextual information and the extracted event features “2017.04.04” and “16:33:24:45” may be used as temporal identity resolution factors, all of which may be used to assist in the performance of entity resolution operations.

In certain embodiments, the entity identifier element type classification module 1306 may be implemented to use the entity type reference engine 1312 to assign an entity identifier element type to each entity identifier element generated by the entity identifier information parsing module 1304. As used herein, an entity identifier element type broadly refers to a representation of a particular attribute associated with an entity identifier element. In certain embodiments, the entity type reference engine 1312 may be implemented to use a repository of entity identifier classification rules 1372 to assign an entity identifier element type to each entity identifier element.

Using the prior examples to illustrate the use of the entity identifier element type classification 1306 module, the entity identifier elements “John Smith,” “Bob Jones,” and “Rob Adams” may each be recognized as a person's name. Accordingly, they may have a “name” entity identifier element type assigned to them. Likewise, the entity identifier elements “john.smith” and “j smith” may be respectively recognized as an email address name and a user ID. Accordingly, they may respectively be assigned “email name” and “user name” entity identifier element types.

To continue using the prior examples, the entity identifier elements “VP of Sales” and “NewCo” may be respectively recognized as a person's title and the name of a company, while “newco.com” may be recognized as a domain name. Accordingly, they may respectively be assigned “title,” “company,” and “domain” entity identifier element types. Likewise, the temporal identity resolution factors of “May 9, 2016,” “Jun. 15, 2017,” “Nov. 20, 2017,” “02.17.2018,” “2017.04.04,” may all be recognized as dates in different formats, while “2:03” and “16:33:24:45” may both be recognized as timestamps. Accordingly, they may respectively be assigned “date” and “time” entity identifier element types.

To further continue using the prior examples, the extracted event features of “30.648748” and “−97.687856” may be recognized as Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates. Accordingly, they may be assigned an entity identifier element type of “GPS.” Likewise, the entity identifier elements of “abc123!” and “salesleads.xls” may respectively be recognized as a password and a file name. Accordingly they may respectively be assigned entity identifier element types of “password” and “file name.”

In certain embodiments, the identity resolution system 118 may be implemented to include an entity identifier element normalization 1308 module. In certain embodiments, the entity identifier element normalization 1308 module may be implemented to normalize entity identifier elements classified by the entity identifier element type classification 1306 module. In certain embodiments, the entity identifier element normalization 1308 module may be implemented to use rules stored in a repository of entity identifier classification rules 1372 to normalize an entity identifier element.

In certain embodiments, the entity identifier element normalization 708 module may be implemented to generate type-dependent normalized entity identifier elements. As an example, an entity identifier element may be classified as an email entity identifier type. However, the entity identifier element may be further classified to be a Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) or Microsoft® Exchange® email address. Accordingly, in certain embodiments, the classified entity identifier element may be respectively processed to generate a type-dependent normalized entity identifier element according to whether it is an SMTP or Exchange® email address. In certain embodiments, the normalization operations performed by the entity identifier element normalization 708 module may result in an inferred relationship between two or more entity identifier elements, as described in greater detail herein.

Using the prior examples to illustrate the use of the entity identifier element normalization 708 module, the temporal identity resolution factors of “May 9, 2016,” “Jun. 15, 2017,” “Nov. 20, 2017,” “02.17.2018,” and “2017.04.04” may all be assigned an entity identifier type of “date,” yet they do not share a consistent format. Accordingly, they may respectively be normalized by the entity identifier element normalization 708 module into a common format, such as “2016.05.09,” “2017.06.15,” “2017.11.20,” “02.17.2018,” and “2017.04.04.” Likewise, the temporal identity resolution factors of “2:03” and “16:33:24:45” may both be assigned an entity identifier type of “time,” yet they do not share the same format. Accordingly, they may respectively be normalized by the entity identifier element normalization 708 module into a common format, such as “02:03:00:00” and “16:33:24:45.”

In continuing to use the prior examples to illustrate the use of the entity identifier element normalization 1308 module, the event stream 802 may have contained an email address of “John Smith <john.smith@newco.com>”. In the prior example, the resulting entity identifier elements included “John Smith,” “john.smith,” and “newco.com.” Likewise, the entity identifier elements of “john.smith,” and “newco.com” were respectively assigned entity identifier types of “email name” and “domain.” Accordingly, the original email address of “John Smith <john.smith@newco.com>” may be normalized into a uniform format, such as “john.smith@newco.com.”

In certain embodiments, the entity identifier element normalization 708 module may be implemented to normalize a variety of entity identifier information, such as user authentication factors, user identity factors, location data, information associated with various endpoint and edge devices, internal and external network addresses, resource entities, or a combination thereof. Skilled practitioners of the art will recognize that many such embodiments are possible. Accordingly, the foregoing is not intended to limit the spirit, scope or intent of the invention.

In certain embodiments, the entity identifier element association 1310 module may be implemented to associate related entity identifier elements that have respectively been classified and normalized by the entity identifier element type classification 1306 module and the entity identifier element normalization 1308 module. In various embodiments, the entity identifier element association 1310 module may be implemented to associate certain temporal information with a classified or normalized entity identifier element.

In certain embodiments, the temporal information may include the time at which related entity identifier elements that have respectively been classified and normalized by the entity identifier element type classification 1306 module and the entity identifier element normalization 1308 module. In certain embodiments, the temporal information may include the time at which a normalized entity identifier element has been matched, or resolved, to a particular entity. In certain embodiments, the association operations performed by the entity identifier element association 1310 module may result in the classified and normalized entity identifier elements to be cross-referenced to one another or otherwise indexed.

In certain embodiments, the association operations performed by the entity identifier element association 1310 module may result in the cross-referencing, or indexing, of classified and normalized entity identifier elements that were not originally related to one another. To continue using the prior examples to illustrate such cross-referencing, the entity identifier elements “John Smith,” “VP of Sales,” “NewCo,” “2016.05.09,” “2017.06.15,” “john.smith,” “newco.com” “j smith,” and “abc123!” may have been parsed, classified and normalized from different event streams 802. However, they are all related to one another. Accordingly, they may be cross-referenced, or otherwise indexed, to create a unified data record, such as “John Smith, VP of Sales, Newco, john.smith@newco.com, j smith, abc123!, 2016.05.09, 2017.06.15.” In certain embodiments, the entity identifier element association 1310 module may be implemented to store such cross-referenced, or otherwise indexed, entity identifier data elements in a repository of entity identifier data 670. In certain embodiments, the eventually consistent entity resolution 1214 module may be implemented to perform eventually consistent entity resolution operations, described in greater detail herein.

In certain embodiments, the event stream 802 may be received in real-time. In certain embodiments the resolution of the identity of an entity may be performed in real-time. In certain embodiments, the entity resolution system 124 may be implemented to use identity reference data stored in the repository of entity identifier data 670 to resolve the identity of an entity. In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to process various entity queries 1320 by performing entity querying operations.

As used herein, entity querying operations broadly refer to operations associated with parsing, classifying and normalizing entity identifiers to generate entity identifier elements, which are in turn processed to identify, or resolve, a corresponding entity. In certain embodiments, the identification, or resolution, of the entity is performed by using the entity identifier elements to query a repository of entity identifier data 670. In certain embodiments, performance of the entity querying operations may result in the identification of additional entity identifier elements associated with the identified, or resolved, entity. In certain embodiments, such additional entity identifier elements may be returned as a result of performing the entity querying operations.

In certain embodiments, the entity querying operations may be performed in response to receiving an entity query 1320 from a risk service 422, described in greater detail in the descriptive text associated with FIG. 4. In certain embodiments, the entity querying operations may be performed in response to receiving an entity query from a security analytics system or service, likewise described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the entity querying operations may be performed in response to receiving an entity query from a querying system. In these embodiments, the querying system selected to submit an entity query 1320 for entity identifier data 670 to the security analytics system 118 is a matter of design choice.

In certain embodiments, the entity identifier elements returned as a result of the entity querying operations may be used in combination with other data to perform various security analysis operations. Skilled practitioners of the art will appreciate that such security analysis operations will likely be more useful and accurate when aggregated by a particular entity instead of by various entity identifier elements. Those of skill in the art will likewise recognize that many such embodiments are possible. Accordingly, the foregoing is not intended to limit the spirit, scope or intent of the invention.

FIG. 14 is a simplified block diagram of a security analytics system implemented in accordance with an embodiment of the invention for providing resolution of an entity's identity. In certain embodiments, a security analytics system 118 may be implemented to monitor user behavior associated with a user, such as user ‘A’ 702. In certain embodiments, the user behavior is monitored during user/device 830, user/network 742, user/resource 748, and user/user 764 interactions. In certain embodiments, the user/user 764 interactions may occur between a first user, such as user ‘A’ 702, and a second user, such as user ‘B’ 762.

In certain embodiments, as likewise described in greater detail herein, an endpoint agent 306 may be implemented on the endpoint device 304 to perform the user behavior monitoring. In certain embodiments, the user behavior may be monitored by the endpoint agent 306 during user/device 730 interactions between a user, such as user ‘A’ 702, and an endpoint device 304. In certain embodiments, the user behavior may be monitored by the endpoint agent 306 during user/network 742 interactions between user ‘A’ 702 and a network, such as an internal 744 or external 746 network.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics 118 system may be implemented to include an entity resolution system 124, described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the entity resolutions system 124 may be implemented to perform various entity resolution operations, likewise described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the endpoint agent 306 may be implemented in combination with the security analytics system 118, and the entity resolution system 124 to provide resolution of an entity, such as user ‘A’ 702 of user ‘B’ 762.

In certain embodiments, the endpoint agent 306 may be implemented to include an analytics 310 module and an entity resolution feature pack 1408. In certain embodiments, the entity resolution feature pack 1408 may be further implemented to include an event data detector 1410 module, an event data collector 1412 module, and an endpoint security policy 1414. As used herein, an endpoint security policy 1414 broadly refers to a security policy implemented to be revised by the security analytics system 118 to remediate risk associated with certain user behaviors.

In certain embodiments, the security analytics system 118 may be implemented to revise the endpoint security policy 1412 as a result of performing certain entity resolution operations, described in greater detail herein. As an example, user ‘B’ 762 may attempt to pose as user ‘A’ 702 in an attempt to illicitly access a particular system 756. However, the performance of certain entity resolution operations during the process of user ‘B’ 762 attempting to access the system 756 may result in the endpoint security policy 1414 being revised to prevent access.

In certain embodiments, the event data detector 1410 module may be implemented to detect event data, described in greater detail herein, resulting from user/device 730, user/network 742, user/resource 748, and user/user 764 interactions. In certain embodiments, the event data collector 1312 module may be implemented to collect the event data detected by the event data detector 1410 module into a stream of event data, likewise described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the endpoint agent 306 may be implemented to communicate the stream of event data collected by the event data collector 1412 module to the security analytics 118 system.

Referring now to FIG. 14, entity resolution operations are begun in certain embodiments by the security analytics system 118 receiving a stream of event stream data, described in greater detail herein. In certain embodiments, the stream of event data is provided to the security analytics system 118 by the endpoint agent 306. The event stream data is then processed to generate entity identifier information and determine associated event process steps, as likewise described in greater detail herein.

The entity identifier information is then parsed to generate unclassified entity identifier elements, which are then classified and normalized, followed by the association of any related classified and normalized entity identifier elements. In certain embodiments, the entity resolution system 124 may be implemented to parse the entity identifier information into unclassified entity identifier elements. In certain embodiments, the entity resolution system 124 may likewise be implemented to classify, normalize and associate the resulting entity identifier elements as described in greater detail herein.

Certain normalized entity identifier elements are then selected, followed by a determination being made whether the selected normalized entity identifier elements match any other normalized entity identifier elements stored in a repository of entity identifier data 670. In certain embodiments, the normalized entity identifier elements selected to match any other normalized entity identifier elements stored in a repository of entity identifier data 670 are a matter of design choice. If it is determined the selected normalized entity identifier elements do not match any other normalized entity identifier elements stored in the repository of entity identifier data 670, then a decision is made whether to generate a new resolved entity. If it is decided not to, then the entity is marked as being unresolved and the endpoint security policy 1414 corresponding to the event and an unresolved entity is enforced. In certain embodiments, the method by which the security policy is enforced is a matter of design choice.

However, if it was decided to generate a new resolved entity, then the normalized entity elements that were previously selected, and their associated entity identifier elements, are processed to generate a new resolved entity, which in turn is added to the repository of entity identifier data 670. However, if it was determined that the selected normalized entity identifier elements match other normalized entity identifier elements stored in a repository of entity identifier data 670, then they are processed with previously resolved entity identifier elements to further resolve the entity.

Thereafter, or once the newly resolved entity is added to a repository of entity identity data 670, parameters of the endpoint security policy 1414 corresponding to the event and a resolved entity are checked. Based upon the parameters of the endpoint security policy 1414, a decision is then made whether to allow the process associated with the event proceed to the next step. If not, then the security policy corresponding to the event and a resolved entity is enforced. Otherwise, the entity is allowed to proceed to the next step of the process of the event.

FIG. 15 is a simplified block diagram of entity identifier classification operations performed in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In certain embodiments, entity identifier information is parsed, as described in greater detail herein, to generate unclassified 1502 entity identifier elements. In certain embodiments, a classification process 1504 may be implemented to generate classified 1506 entity identifier elements from such unclassified 1502 entity identifier elements. In certain embodiments, type-dependent denormalization 1534 operations, as described in greater detail herein, are then performed on the resulting classified 1506 entity identifier elements.

In certain embodiments, the classification process 1504 may be implemented to classify a particular entity identifier element according to a provided explicit type 1512. In certain embodiments, the explicit type 1512 of an unclassified entity identifier 1502 may be provided by an external system. In certain embodiments, the explicit type 1512 of an entity identifier element may be unequivocally denoted. In certain embodiments, the unclassified entity identifier 1502 may have an explicit type 1512 appended to its associated particular value. As an example, as shown in FIG. 15, a first 1508 unclassified entity identifier element of “John Smith” may have a provided explicit type of “Name,” while a second 1510 unclassified entity identifier element of “john.smith@co.com” may have a provided explicit type of “smtp.”

In this example, the first 1508 and second 1510 unclassified entity identifier elements are processed with their associated explicit types 1512 to respectively generate a first 1514 and second 1516 classified entity identifier element. Accordingly, the resulting first 1514 classified identifier element has a value of “John Smith” with an associated type of “Name.” Likewise, the resulting second 1516 classified identifier element has a value of “john.smith@co.com” with an associated type of “smtp.”

In certain embodiments, the classification process 1504 may be implemented to use type inference 1524 to classify a particular entity identifier element. In certain embodiments, the classification process 1504 of an entity identifier element through type inference 1524 may be implemented to use various entity identifier classification rules 1526. As an example, as shown in FIG. 15, a third 1518, fourth 1520, and fifth 1522 unclassified entity identifier element may respectively have a value of jane.smith@co.com, “10.0.0.1,” and “11e8-a8fo.”

In this example, the third 1518, fourth 1520, and fifth 1522 unclassified entity identifier elements are classified 1504 using type inference 1524 to respectively generate a third 1528, fourth 1530, and fifth 1532 classified entity identifier element. Accordingly, the resulting third 1528 classified identifier element has a value of “jane.smith@co.com” with an associated type pf “smtp,” while the resulting fourth 1530 classified identifier element has a value of “10.0.0.1” with an associated type of “IP Address.” Likewise, the resulting fifth 1532 classified identifier element has a value of “11e8-a8fo,” with an associated type of “Literal/Unknown.”

To continue the example, the entity identifier classification rules 1526 may include a rule stating an unclassified entity identifier element 1502 containing two names separated by a period, which are then followed by an ampersand symbol, which is in turn followed by an alphanumeric string, which is then followed by a period and a domain extension, is likely an email address. Likewise, the entity identifier classification rules 1526 may include a rule stating that an unclassified entity identifier element 1502 containing four numbers, each of which is three digits or less and separated by a period, is likely an IP address. Skilled practitioners of the art will recognize that many such examples of entity identifier element classification processes 1504, and associated entity identifier classification rules 1526, are possible. Accordingly, the foregoing is not intended to limit the spirit, scope or intent of the invention.

FIG. 16 is a simplified block diagram of entity identifier normalization operations performed in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In certain embodiments, a normalization process 1604 may be implemented to generate normalized 1606 entity identifier elements from classified 1602 entity identifier elements. In certain embodiments, a resulting normalized 1606 entity identifier element may not have an exact match in a repository of resolved entity identifier data, described in greater detail herein. Accordingly, it may be difficult to establish a relationship with other classified 1602 entity identifier elements.

As an example, a normalization process 1604 may be performed on a first 1608 classified entity identifier element having a value of “Jane Doe” to generate a first 1610 normalized entity identifier element with a value of “jane doe.” Accordingly, a direct relationship 1612 can be established between the first 1610 normalized entity identifier element and the first 1608 classified entity identifier element. However, it may be difficult to establish a relationship between the first 1610 normalized entity identifier element and other classified 1602 entity identifier elements if it is the only such normalized 1606 entity identifier element present in a repository of resolved entity identifier data.

In certain embodiments, a resulting normalized 1606 entity identifier element may have an exact match in a repository of resolved entity identifier data. As an example, a normalization process 1604 may be performed on a second 1614 classified entity identifier element having a value of “John Smith” to generate a second 1616 normalized entity identifier element with a value of “john smith.” Accordingly, a direct relationship 1620 can be established between the second 1616 normalized entity identifier element and the second 1614 classified entity identifier element.

Likewise, a normalization process 1604 may be performed on a third 1620 classified entity identifier element having a value of “JOHN SMITH” to generate a third 1622 normalized entity identifier element with a value of “john smith.” Accordingly, a direct relationship 1624 can be established between the third 1626 normalized entity identifier element and the third 1620 classified entity identifier element. To continue the example, both the second 1616 and third 1622 normalized entity identifier elements have the same value of “john smith,” which implies 1626 a relationship of antecedents. Consequently, an inferred 1628 relationship can be established between the second 1616 and third 1622 normalized entity identifier elements, based upon their identical values, and second 1614 and third 1620 classified entity identifier elements.

FIG. 17 is a generalized flowchart of the performance of entity identifier element type classification and normalization operations implemented in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In this embodiment, entity identifier element classification and normalization operations are begun in step 1702, followed by the receipt of entity identifier information in step 1704. The entity identifier information is then parsed, as described in greater detail herein, in step 1706 to generated entity identifier elements.

One of the resulting entity identifier elements is selected in step 1708, followed by the performance of comparison operations in step 1710 to compare it to known entity identifier element types. A determination is then made in step 1712 whether the selected entity identifier element matches any known entity identifier element types. In certain embodiments, the determination of whether the selected entity identifier element matches any known entity identifier element types may be accomplished through the use of one or more entity identifier element classification rules, described in greater detail herein.

If it was determined in step 1712 that the entity identifier element does not match any known entity identifier element types, then the selected entity identifier element is classified with an entity identifier element type of “unknown” in step 1714. Otherwise, the selected entity identifier element is classified with the known entity identifier element type it matches in step 1716. Once classified, the entity identifier element is normalized, as described in greater detail herein, in step 1718. In certain embodiments, the entity identifier element is normalized through the use of one or more entity identifier element normalization rules, described in greater detail herein.

Thereafter, or once the entity identifier element classification operations are completed in step 1714, a determination is made in step 1720 whether to perform classification and normalization operations on another entity identifier element. If so, then the process is continued, proceeding with step 1708. Otherwise, classified and normalized entity identifier elements that are related to one another are associated, as described in greater detail herein, in step 1722. A determination is then made in step 1724 whether to end of entity identifier element type classification and normalization operations. If not, then the process is continued, proceeding with step 1704. Otherwise, of entity identifier element type classification and normalization operations are ended in step 1726.

FIGS. 18a and 18b are a generalized flowchart of the performance of operations implemented in accordance with an embodiment of the invention for resolution of an entity's identity. In this embodiment, identity resolution operations are begun in step 1802, followed by receiving event stream data, described in greater detail herein, in step 1804. The event stream data is then processed in step 1806 to generate entity identifier information and determine associated event process steps, as likewise described in greater detail herein.

The entity identifier information is then parsed in step 1808 to generate unclassified entity identifier elements. The resulting unclassified entity identifier elements are then classified and normalized in step 1810, followed by the association of related classified and normalized entity identifier elements in step 1812. Normalized entity identifier elements are then selected in step 1814, followed by a determination being made in step 1816 whether the selected normalized entity identifier elements match any other normalized entity identifier elements stored in a repository of entity identifier data.

If not, then a determination is made in step 1818 whether to generate a new resolved entity. If not, then the entity is marked as being unresolved in step 1820 and the security policy corresponding to the event and an unresolved entity is enforced in step 1822. A determination is then made in step 1838 whether to continue entity resolution operations. If so, then the process is continued, proceeding with step 1804. Otherwise, entity resolution operations are ended in step 1840.

However, if it was determined in step 1818 to generate a new resolved entity, then the normalized entity elements that were selected in step 1814, and their associated entity identifier elements, are processed in step 1824 to generate a new resolved entity, which in turn is added to a repository of entity identifier data in step 1826. However, if it was determined in step 1816 that the selected normalized entity identifier elements match any other normalized entity identifier elements stored in a repository of entity identifier data, then they are processed in step 1828 with previously resolved entity identifier elements to further resolve the entity.

Thereafter, or once the newly resolved entity is added to a repository of entity identity data in step 1826, parameters of the security policy corresponding to the event and a resolved entity are checked in step 1830. Based upon the parameters of the security policy, a determination is then made in step 1832 whether to allow the process associated with the event proceed to the next step. If not, then the security policy corresponding to the event and a resolved entity is enforced in step 1834. Otherwise, the entity is allowed to proceed to the next step of the process of the event in step 1836. Thereafter, or once the security policy corresponding to the event and a resolved entity is enforced in step 1834, the process is continued, proceeding with step 1838.

As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, the present invention may be embodied as a method, system, or computer program product. Accordingly, embodiments of the invention may be implemented entirely in hardware, entirely in software (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.) or in an embodiment combining software and hardware. These various embodiments may all generally be referred to herein as a “circuit,” “module,” or “system.” Furthermore, the present invention may take the form of a computer program product on a computer-usable storage medium having computer-usable program code embodied in the medium.

Any suitable computer usable or computer readable medium may be utilized. The computer-usable or computer-readable medium may be, for example, but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, or device. More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of the computer-readable medium would include the following: a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory), a portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), an optical storage device, or a magnetic storage device. In the context of this document, a computer-usable or computer-readable medium may be any medium that can contain, store, communicate, or transport the program for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.

Computer program code for carrying out operations of the present invention may be written in an object oriented programming language such as Java, Smalltalk, C++ or the like. However, the computer program code for carrying out operations of the present invention may also be written in conventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C” programming language or similar programming languages. The program code may execute entirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider).

Embodiments of the invention are described with reference to flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus (systems) and computer program products according to embodiments of the invention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented by computer program instructions. These computer program instructions may be provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus, create means for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.

These computer program instructions may also be stored in a computer-readable memory that can direct a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to function in a particular manner, such that the instructions stored in the computer-readable memory produce an article of manufacture including instruction means which implement the function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.

The computer program instructions may also be loaded onto a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer or other programmable apparatus to produce a computer implemented process such that the instructions which execute on the computer or other programmable apparatus provide steps for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.

The present invention is well adapted to attain the advantages mentioned as well as others inherent therein. While the present invention has been depicted, described, and is defined by reference to particular embodiments of the invention, such references do not imply a limitation on the invention, and no such limitation is to be inferred. The invention is capable of considerable modification, alteration, and equivalents in form and function, as will occur to those ordinarily skilled in the pertinent arts. The depicted and described embodiments are examples only, and are not exhaustive of the scope of the invention.

Consequently, the invention is intended to be limited only by the spirit and scope of the appended claims, giving full cognizance to equivalents in all respects. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implementable method for resolving an identity of an entity, comprising: parsing entity identifier information from a plurality of distributed data sources, the parsing generating a plurality of entity identifier elements from the entity identifier information; normalizing an entity identifier element of the plurality of entity identifier elements to provide a normalized entity identifier element; associating the normalized entity identifier element with the entity to resolve the identity of the entity; and, performing an eventually consistent entity resolution operation, the eventually consistent entity resolution operation updating distributed data associated with the entity, distributed data corresponding to entity identifiers impacted by subsequent changes to entity mappings being updated by the eventually consistent entity resolution operation to reflect a more recent entity mapping, the eventually consistent entity resolution operation returning a last updated resolution of an identity of a particular entity when no new updates are made to information associated with resolution of the identity of the particular entity.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprising: performing a denormalization operation on a resolved entity identifier element, the denormalization operation providing a denormalized entity identifier element; and wherein the eventually consistent resolution operation uses the denormalized entity identifier element.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein: resolving the identity of the entity is with respect to a particular security related event.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein: the entity identifier information comprises at least one of a user identification factor, a user identifier factor, location data, information associated with an endpoint device, information associated with an edge device, information associated with an internal network, information associated with an external network and information associated with a resource entity.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein: the entity identifier element has an associated entity identifier type; and, the associated entity identifier type comprises a representation of a particular attribute associated with an entity identifier element.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein: the entity identifier element has an associated entity identifier type; the entity identifier element type comprises at least one of a simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) address type, an exchange address type and an inferred type; and, normalizing the entity identifier element is specific to the entity identifier element type.
 7. A system comprising: a processor; a data bus coupled to the processor; and a non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium embodying computer program code for resolving an identity of an entity, the non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium being coupled to the data bus, the computer program code interacting with a plurality of computer operations and comprising instructions executable by the processor and configured for: parsing entity identifier information from a plurality of distributed data sources, the parsing generating a plurality of entity identifier elements from the entity identifier information; normalizing an entity identifier element of the plurality of entity identifier elements to provide a normalized entity identifier element; associating the normalized entity identifier element with the entity to resolve the identity of the entity; and, performing an eventually consistent entity resolution operation, the eventually consistent entity resolution operation updating distributed data associated with the entity, distributed data corresponding to entity identifiers impacted by subsequent changes to entity mappings being updated by the eventually consistent entity resolution operation to reflect a more recent entity mapping, the eventually consistent entity resolution operation returning a last updated resolution of an identity of a particular entity when no new updates are made to information associated with resolution of the identity of the particular entity.
 8. The system of claim 7, wherein the instructions executable by the processor are further configured for: performing a denormalization operation on a resolved entity identifier element, the denormalization operation providing a denormalized entity identifier element; and wherein the eventually consistent resolution operation uses the denormalized entity identifier element.
 9. The system of claim 7, wherein: resolving the identity of the entity is with respect to a particular security related event.
 10. The system of claim 7, wherein: the entity identifier information comprises at least one of a user identification factor, a user identifier factor, location data, information associated with an endpoint device, information associated with an edge device, information associated with an internal network, information associated with an external network and information associated with a resource entity.
 11. The system of claim 7, wherein: the entity identifier element has an associated entity identifier type; and, the associated entity identifier type comprises a representation of a particular attribute associated with an entity identifier element.
 12. The system of claim 7, wherein: the entity identifier element has an associated entity identifier type; the entity identifier element type comprises at least one of a simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) address type, an exchange address type and an inferred type; and, normalizing the entity identifier element is specific to the entity identifier element type.
 13. A non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium embodying computer program code for resolving an identity of an entity, the computer program code comprising computer executable instructions configured for: parsing entity identifier information from a plurality of distributed data sources, the parsing generating a plurality of entity identifier elements from the entity identifier information; normalizing an entity identifier element of the plurality of entity identifier elements to provide a normalized entity identifier element; associating the normalized entity identifier element with the entity to resolve the identity of the entity; and, performing an eventually consistent entity resolution operation, the eventually consistent entity resolution operation updating distributed data associated with the entity, distributed data corresponding to entity identifiers impacted by subsequent changes to entity mappings being updated by the eventually consistent event entity resolution operation to reflect a more recent entity mapping, the eventually consistent entity resolution operation returning a last updated resolution of an identity of a particular entity when no new updates are made to information associated with resolution of the identity of the particular entity.
 14. The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 13, wherein the computer executable instructions are further configured for: performing a denormalization operation on a resolved entity identifier element, the denormalization operation providing a denormalized entity identifier element; and wherein the eventually consistent resolution operation uses the denormalized entity identifier element.
 15. The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 13, wherein: resolving the identity of the entity is with respect to a particular security related event.
 16. The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 13, wherein: the entity identifier information comprises at least one of a user identification factor, a user identifier factor, location data, information associated with an endpoint device, information associated with an edge device, information associated with an internal network, information associated with an external network and information associated with a resource entity.
 17. The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 13, wherein: the entity identifier element has an associated entity identifier type; and, the associated entity identifier type comprises a representation of a particular attribute associated with an entity identifier element.
 18. The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 13, wherein: the entity identifier element has an associated entity identifier type; the entity identifier element type comprises at least one of a simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) address type, an exchange address type and an inferred type; and, normalizing the entity identifier element is specific to the entity identifier element type.
 19. The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 13, wherein: the computer executable instructions are deployable to a client system from a server system at a remote location.
 20. The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 13, wherein: the computer executable instructions are provided by a service provider to a user on an on-demand basis. 